Book excerpt: This book addresses the idea of 'civility' as a manifestation of the fluidity and ambivalence of imperial power as reflected in British colonial literature and culture. Discussions of Anglo-Indian romances of 1880-1900, E.M. Forster's The Life to Come and Leonard Woolf's writings show how the appeal to civility had a significant effect on the constitution of colonial subject-hood and reveals 'civility' as an ideal trope for the ambivalence of imperial power itself.