 |
About
Us
Mission
- Vision - Goals | Staff
| Board of Directors
| Office
History
| Presidents |
|
|
 The
Thoreau Society's offices are located at the birth house of Henry D. Thoreau (341 Virginia Road, Concord, Massachusetts), near Minute Man National Historical Park. The Society leases its office space from the Thoreau Farm Trust.
Concord is where the American War for Independence began on April 19, 1775 and was home to Henry Thoreau (1817-1862) and many of the New England Transcendentalists and great American authors, including Ralph Waldo
Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Nathaniel Hawthorne among others.
Established in 1941, The Thoreau Society is the
oldest and largest organization devoted to an American
author. The 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
Thoreau Society archives are housed at the Thoreau
Institute's Henley Library in Lincoln, Massachusetts. This
repository includes the collections of Walter Harding and Raymond
Adams, two of the foremost authorities on Thoreau and founders
of the Thoreau Society; and those of Roland Robbins, who uncovered
Thoreau's Walden house site.
Thoreau
Society members represent a wide range of professions, interests,
and hometowns across the United States and around the world. They
are connected by the conviction that Henry Thoreau had important
things to say and crucial questions to ask that are just as significant
in our time as in his. Our list
of past Society presidents is a sampling of the kinds of people
who have been attracted to Thoreau's writings and philosophies.
Through its programs, publications and projects, the Thoreau Society
is committed to exploring Thoreau's observations on living with
self, society and nature, and encouraging people to think about
how they live their own lives. |
| |
|
|
|
Mission:
The Thoreau
Society exists to stimulate interest in and foster education
about Thoreau’s life, works, legacy and his place in his
world and in ours, challenging all to live a deliberate, considered
life.
Vision:
The Thoreau
Society keeps Thoreau’s writings and ideas alive across
time and across generations.
Organizational
Goals:
- To encourage
research on Thoreau’s life and works and to act as a repository
for Thoreau-related materials
- To educate
the public about Thoreau’s ideas and their application
to contemporary life
- To preserve
Thoreau’s legacy and advocate for the preservation of
Thoreau country
Click here
to read the Thoreau Society By-Laws. Click here
to read the amendment to the By-Laws that was passed by the membership
in June 2005.
|
| |
|
| |
Staff
Michael Frederick,
Executive Director
Mike has a background in financial services, marketing, technology, and non-profit managment. Within the last ten years, he has served on the Melrose Centenial Publications and Planning Committees, the Friends of the Middlesex Fells Board of Directors, the Thoreau Farm Trust Advisory Board, and the Walden Pond Advisory Board. He holds a BS in Finance (Suffolk University)
and an ALM in History (Harvard University), where
he completed graduate work on Thoreau's ethics and social philosophy.
Marlene Mandel,
Accountant
Marlene is a CPA who has worked with non-profits and for corporations. She has experience in finance, accounting and in business management and strategic planning. Her most recent expertise is with small businesses.
Richard Smith; Shop at Walden Pond Associate, Historic Interpreter
Richard is originally from
Cleveland, Ohio, and has a background in history and education,
with 20 years of experience in museum studies. He has lived in
the Concord area for almost a decade, working at various historic
sites as an historian and research assistant. This is his second
stint with the Thoreau Society. Along with his writing and
research, Richard is also involved in Living History and is best
known around the area as "Henry Thoreau." He has been
portraying the Transcendentalist since 1999. Richard, as "Henry,"
appears regularly at Walden Pond and has also traveled a great
deal in Concord and elsewhere on Thoreau's behalf.
Jon Fadiman, Shop at Walden Pond Associate
Jon has worked at the Shop for more than 11 years, starting in
1995, six months after it opened. He has an educational background
in physics, electrical engineering, and marketing. He graduated
from Amherst College; then took his Masters at Harvard, plus additional
post-graduate work. Jon is fluent in French and speaks German
and some other languages. He was Director of International Sales
for several computer companies. Jon lived for a time with his
family in France and worked as a director of two companies there.
He authored many technical and travel articles. Jon was brought
up in a family of authors, and publishing was always part of his
life. This explains his delight in working for the Thoreau Society. |
| |
|
| |
Publications
Editor
- Thoreau Society Bulletin
Leslie Perrin Wilson, lwilson@minlib.net
Editor
- The Concord Saunterer: A Journal of Thoreau Studies
Laura Dassow Walls, PhD.
Dr.
Walls is John H. Bennett Jr. Chair of Southern Letters at the
University of South Carolina. She specializes in American Transcendentalism,
Cross-Atlantic Romanticism, Literature and Science, and Alexander
von Humboldt. Her publications include:
- More
Day to Dawn: Thoreau’s “Walden" for a New Century,
(with "Afterword"). Ed. with Sandra Petrulionis. Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2006.
- Emerson's
Life in Science: The Culture of Truth. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 2003. Pp. viii + 280; bibliography, index,
illustrations.
- The
Oxford Guide to Transcendentalism. Ed. with Joel Myerson
and Sandra Petrulionis. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming
2009. 600+ pp.
- The
Journal of Henry David Thoreau, Vol. 9. Co-editor with
Wesley T. Mott. Princeton University Press; publication scheduled
for 2008.
- Material
Faith: Thoreau on Science. Editor and author of "Introduction:
The Man Most Alive" (ix-xviii). NY: Houghton Mifflin, 1999.
Pp. xviii + 120.
- Seeing
New Worlds: Henry David Thoreau and Nineteenth-Century Natural
Science. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
Pp. xiii + 300; bibliography, index.
|
| |
|
| |
Thoreau
Society Collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods
Jeffrey S. Cramer is curator of collections at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods
Jeff is editor of several Thoreau volumes for Yale University Press, including Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition (Yale University Press, 2004), and is currently preparing three books for publication: The Quotable Thoreau (Princeton University Press, 2011), The Portable Thoreau (Viking Penguin, 2011), and Selected Essays of Thoreau: A Fully Annotated Edition (Yale University Press, 2012).
For appointments at the Henley Library and to view The Thoreau Society Collections, call:
(781) 259-4700.
|
| |
|
|
Board
of Directors
Officers:
President:
Tom
Potter
Martinsville, Indiana
Treasurer:
Michael Schleifer, CPA
Brooklyn, New York
Secretary:
Gayle Moore
Martinsville, Indiana
Directors:
Michael Berger, PhD
Cincinnati, OH
J. Walter Brain
Lincoln, MA
Andrew Celentano
Stoneham, MA
Robert Clarke
Woodbury, CT
Susan Gallagher, PhD
Medford, MA
Margaret Gram
Acton, MA
Brianne Keith
Somerville, MA
Elise Lemire, PhD
Port Chester, NY
Daniel Malachuk, PhD
Bettendorf, IA
Christine O’Connor, JD
Lowell, MA
Charles T. Phillips
Concord, MA
Dale Schwie
Minneapolis, MN
Kevin Van Anglen, PhD
Bedford, NH
Joseph Wheeler
Concord, MA
Committees:
Development
(Paula Peinovich, chair)
Finance (J. Walter Brain, chair)
Nominations and Elections (Kevin Van Anglen, chair)
Publications (Wesley T. Mott, chair)
Standing (Tom Potter, chair)
Office
341 Virginia
Road
Concord,
Massachusetts 01742
(978) 369-5310
(just beyond the
historic intersection of Meriam's Corner) |
|
|
| |
|
|
