Hubbell has a M.Litt. from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and is currently studying for a Ph.D. in history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In the following essay, he investigates "the Theory of the Horrible" as psychological adventure in James' story.

The Ambassadors conjures a story of a man, or men, on a mission who must carry out an errand for a notable personage. Given the time of its publication, the title further suggests an imperial adventure with an American going out to a foreign land to exchange ideas and sympathies. These are not incorrect assumptions, especially in context of what people were hearing and reading about in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Lectures about primitive peoples or exhibits of dinosaurs were delivered as captivating eyewitness accounts. The Adventurers of Tom Sawyer, H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines...