"Adventure" Magazine April 1915 - cover image courtesy of MagazineArt.org

Adventurers and explorers have a way of capturing our imagination.

The life or death situations they narrowly escape from, the risks they take, and the stories and images they come back with all spark excitement inside of us.

The stories of explorers and their expeditions enable us to experience their adventures without having to strap on a pair of snowshoes and walk across the arctic tundra.

We get much of the adventure without any of the pain!

Creating a product, a book about the explorations and adventures of famous explorers could take several years to create. Interviews, content, and images will all need to be collected or created.

Who has time for that, particularly when there are truly magnificent books on the subject in the Public Domain?

The Last Secrets; The Final Mysteries Of Exploration by John Buchan is available in the Public Domain and is a real find for true adventure aficionados…

Open the book, or flip through the PDF, and the first image readers will come to is a striking photo of Mt Everest.

There are more images of Everest later on as well as Mt McKinley and a wealth of maps and plates which when combined could create a fantastic stand alone product like a calendar or a coffee table book.

The Last Secrets contains nine stories of adventure.

Each story could stand alone quite easily as a short book simply reprinted or you could add to each story with other known facts and images about that particular explorer, expedition or area.

Everest, for example, has had hundreds of explorers summit each year and everyone has a story to tell. You could also dig up a few Public Domain magazine articles or images on the subject of climbing, exploring and unique areas like Everest, McKinley, and Kilimanjaro to supplement your mountaineering guide book, coffee table book or story.

The adventure stories in The Last Secrets can be updated with current maps and images as well as tips and advice for present day explorers who wish to follow in the footsteps of earlier old-time adventurers.

Your products could even include affiliate links to travel books, organizations, and adventure gear.

Here’s a few more tales of adventure and exploration for the armchair adventurer in everyone…

An African Adventure (1921) by Isaac F. Marcosson:

FOREWORD

“FROM earliest boyhood when I read the works of  Henry M. Stanley and books about Cecil Rhodes, Africa has called to me. It was not until I met  General Smuts during the Great War, however, that I had a definite reason for going there.

After these late years of blood and battle America and Europe seemed tame. Besides, the economic war after the war developed into a struggle as bitter as the actual physical conflict. Discord and discontent became the portion of the civilized world. I wanted to get as far as possible from all this social unrest and financial dislocation.

So much interest was evinced in the magazine articles which first set forth the record of my journey that I was prompted to expand them into this book. It may enable the reader to discover a section of the one-time Dark Continent without the hardships which I experienced.”

I. F. M.

African Adventure Stories (1914) by John Alden Loring:

FOREWORD

“The author of this little volume, Mr. J. Alden Loring, is one of the three field naturalists who accompanied me during the eleven months that I spent in Africa, at the head of a scientific expedition sent out by the Smithsonian Institution. In the following pages Mr. Loring has chronicled many of the experiences that befell the expedition and its members, while some of the chapters are devoted to the experiences of trustworthy travellers and big-game hunters whom we met. What he describes as fact may unhesitatingly be accepted as such; and in the preface he clearly differentiates between the experiences in which he records fact, and those in which he tells stories merely founded on fact.”

Theodore Roosevelt.

Oyster Bay, N.Y.

September 19, 1918

PREFACE

“Because of its dangerous animals and in some localities, its dangerous natives, Africa is probably the most lucrative country from which to gather material for a book of this character.

From the time that we boarded the S. S. Admiral bound for Mombass, we met English officers and settlers returning to their respective posts or homes, who rehearsed exciting experiences that at once convinced us that it would be impossible to live long in Africa without having at least one thrilling adventure.

The majority of these stories are literally true. They are the experiences of the various members of our party and of those of gentlemen we met, whose word cannot be doubted. The same can be said of the articles relating to the habits of the animals. The last seven chapters should not accepted as actual fact. They are so far based on fact, however, that they are not improbable.”

J. Alden Loring

OWBOO, N. Y.

March 5, 1914

The Public Domain is literally chock full of millions of wonderful, old-time adventures stories just like these…

Why not explore the Public Domain yourself and have your own adventure uncovering these gems?

Then you can republish and provide these stories to a whole new generation of adventurers that wouldn’t have known about this material otherwise.

Good luck on your new adventures!

About The Author:

Debra Conrad is an online entrepreneur, information publisher, and author that has been using Public Domain material to create profitable products and businesses since 2007. She is also co-author of "The Public Domain Treasure Hunter's Survival Kit" available here. For more info Debra, click here.

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