The Thoreau Society is the oldest and largest organization devoted to a single American author, founded in 1941 and based in Concord, Massachusetts, the town where Henry David Thoreau lived and wrote. Its mission is to stimulate interest in Thoreau's life, works and philosophy, to encourage research on his writings, and to advocate for the preservation of Thoreau Country, work that keeps the transcendentalist tradition Thoreau helped shape in active discussion today.