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News + Events
Joel Myerson Annual Lecture Series
The Concord Free Public Library—in partnership with representatives from the Association for Documentary Editing, Ralph Waldo Emerson Society, Louisa May…
People & the Planet
A Program in Partnership with the Thoreau Society Author talks and writing workshops that encourage critical thinking and perceptive writing…
Beloved Beasts
A Program in Partnership with the Thoreau Society Author talks and writing workshops that encourage critical thinking and perceptive writing…
Online Auction begins March 1, 2023
Book Launch and Discussion
Join Megan Marshall and Lawrence Buell as we celebrate a book launch for Robert D. Richardson’s posthumously published, Three Roads…
Sounds Wild and Broken: Author David Haskell in conversation with Scott Edwards
Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong, and act. We live on a planet alive with…
The Thoreau Society is the oldest and largest organization devoted to an American author and is dedicated to promoting Thoreau’s life and works through education, outreach, and advocacy.
Established in 1941, the Thoreau Society has long contributed to the dissemination of knowledge about Thoreau by collecting books, manuscripts, and artifacts relating to Thoreau and his contemporaries, by encouraging the use of its collections, and by publishing articles in two Society periodicals. The mission of the Society is to stimulate interest in and foster education about Thoreau’s life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world and ours; to encourage research on Thoreau’s life and writings; to act as a repository for Thoreauviana and material relevant to Thoreau; and to advocate for the preservation of Thoreau Country.
Henry David Thoreau saw the exploitation of people and of nature as two sides of the same coin of injustice and oppression.
The Thoreau Society continues our namesake’s struggle to open all eyes to social and environmental injustice, and to end blindness to the consequences of unchecked racism, climate change, and other threats to individual freedom, democratic equality, and social justice in the United States and around the world. As a community devoted to Thoreau’s legacy, we are a work-in-progress, committed to the perpetual challenge of improving the Thoreau Society as an embodiment—and a promoter—of these ideals.
From our Publications
“The Concord Saunterer and Thoreau Society Bulletin contain valuable historical, biographical, critical, and bibliographical information about Henry David Thoreau and Transcendental Concord to be found nowhere else.”
— Lawrence Buell, Harvard University
Serious scholars and general readers alike enjoy reading both the Thoreau Society Bulletin and The Concord Saunterer. In fact, that’s the dynamic that’s fueled our organization since its inception, bringing scholars and enthusiasts together to promote public understanding of Thoreau and his work in his time and in ours.
Our publications have been an important source of information in helping to preserve Thoreau Country as part of our common heritage and as the embodiment of Thoreau’s landmark contributions to social, political, and environmental thought.
