Paul Edgar Hubbell was born in Hat Creek, VA, in 1891. He attended Wake Forest College and the University of Richmond. He briefly taught high school and college Latin until 1914, when he received a Rhodes Scholarship and went to Oxford University to study history. His studies there were interrupted by World War I, and he served in the U.S. Army, returning to Oxford in after the war's end and completing his M.A. in 1920. He taught in Savannah, GA, Furman University, SC, and Baylor College, TX, before coming to Michigan State Normal College in 1923 to teach modern history, especially World War I. He retired from classroom teaching in 1958, after which time he engaged in correspondence courses, wrote numerous letters to the editor on issues of political interest, and published several volumes of poetry. Hubbell was married to M. Anne Thompson (d. 1966) and they had one daughter, Ann. He died at the age of 101 in 1993.