Meet the author

Teddy Keen.

Writer & illustrator · United Kingdom

The real hand behind the Unknown Adventurer, whose lavish faux-journal Lost Book of Adventure titles mix castaway survival and real explorer craft, perfect for reluctant readers who love maps, danger and discovery.

Teddy Keen is a British illustrator, writer and outdoor enthusiast, and the real creator behind the Unknown Adventurer, the mysterious explorer whose discovered notebooks he presents in The Lost Book of Adventure and its companions. Framing his own work as found field journals, Keen fills the pages with handwritten notes, maps, sketches and stuck-in pages, so the books feel like real artefacts, and grounds the survival craft in genuine outdoor knowledge. Nearly all the stories, he says, are drawn from real people and events he grew up with. The Lost Book of Undersea Adventure sends the castaway narrator beneath the waves into marine life, legend and environmental danger. Rich in visual texture and practical fact, his books are catnip for reluctant readers who love maps, danger and discovery without dense prose.