Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge

The Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (est. 1829) in Boston, Massachusetts, was founded "to promote and direct popular education by lectures and other means." Modelled after the recently formed Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in London, the Boston group's officers included Daniel Webster, Nathan Hale, Jacob Bigelow, William Ellery Channing, Edward Everett, Nathaniel L. Frothingham, and Abbott Lawrence. The society published the American Library of Useful Knowledge, a series of scholarly works by British and American authors. Public lectures on a variety of topics were held at Boston's Masonic Temple, and other venues.

In 1829 the founders explained their reasons for creating the society:

"From infancy to the age of seventeen, the means provided in this city by public munificence and private enterprise, are ample. From seventeen to the age when young men enter on the more active and responsible duties of their several stations, sufficient opportunity does not appear to be afforded for mental and moral cultivation. At this period of life, when the mind is active and the passions urgent, and when the invitations to profitless amusements are strongest and most numerous, it is desirable that means should be provided for furnishing at a cheap rate, and in an inviting form, such useful information as will not only add to the general intelligence of the young men referred to, but at the same time will prepare them to engage more understandingly, with a deeper interest, and with better prospect of success, in the pursuits to which their lives are to be devoted.
The existing deficiency of such means is clearly a subject of regret; and the undersigned are of opinion that this deficiency may be most easily and fully supplied by courses of Lectures delivered in different parts of the city, under the auspices of a Society, whose sanction may secure to the Lecturers employed, the confidence and resort of the public. It is proposed that the first courses of Lectures should be given to those who are engaged in Trade and Commerce; and that they should include the subjects of Universal Geography and Statistics, and of the Moral, Natural, Political, and Legal Sciences, so far as they may be connected with commercial transactions."

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