The Wayside, the house where abolitionist Louisa May Alcott lived and harbored runaway slaves, is officially part of the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom.

AP / JON MAHONEY

In the 19th century, Concord, Mass., was a peaceful country village and home to best-selling writers. In the 21st, it’s a bustling, upscale Boston suburb — and still home to best-selling writers.

The literary stars of the past were Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Alcott. Today’s include Doris Kearns Goodwin, Gregory Maguire, Alan Lightman and Robert Coles. Now, as then, dangle a participle in this town and it may be picked up by a writer. In a population of 17,000, Concord counts dozens of them.

On a trip there, you can visit the haunts of great writers past, get a glimpse of the American Revolution and, in the bookstores, library, parks and restaurants, maybe even rub elbows with someone whose book is in your backpack.

Concord sits where the Assabet and Sudbury rivers meet to form the picturesque Concord River. Walden Pond is less than two miles outside the town center. Proud Victorian houses, white church steeples and acres of protected woodlands make it bucolic and inviting. Downtown is a crossroads for Sunday bicyclists and tourist buses.

In 1775, when British troops marched over from Boston in search of a cache of guns belonging to the local militia, the first shots of the American Revolution were fired in nearby Lexington and at Concord’s North Bridge. You can follow the 5.5-mile Battle Road to trace what happened.

In the 1800s, writers lived on Lexington Road in Concord, and some of their houses are open for tours. At Orchard House, an upstairs bedroom is much as it was in 1868, when Louisa May Alcott wrote Little Women there. The Wayside was home at different times to the Alcotts, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Sidney, whose Five Little Peppers children’s series was wildly popular in the late 19th century.

At the Ralph Waldo Emerson house, Emerson lived, wrote and discussed man, nature and the universe with fellow Transcendentalists, including Henry David Thoreau. “It was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling, more or less, the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought,” Hawthorne wrote of Emerson in 1846.

On Main Street, you could lose most of a day browsing in the Concord Bookshop and the Barrow Bookstore, but if you need a break from books, check out the clothing shops, antiques stores and small cafes.

For a real bookworm’s paradise, check out the Concord Free Public Library. Emerson spoke at its dedication in 1873, and after a renovation, it was rededicated in 2005 with a speech by Goodwin, who wrote several of her early books in its main reading room.

“I would go and sit at the long tables surrounded by books and write longhand,” she said. “It was far more beautiful than any office I could have rented. The librarians even took calls from Dick telling me it was time to come home for lunch.”

Despite all this reading and writing, Concord loves the outdoors. At least 30 percent of town land — more than 5,000 acres — is protected from development, and a patchwork of well-trodden wooded trails (many once used by Thoreau) wind by meadows, low stone walls and the Concord River. Jane Langton, the author of 18 adult mysteries and 8 children’s fantasies, all set in Concord, recommends canoe trips on the Concord and Sudbury Rivers to get a sense of the beauty that Thoreau saw.

In town, on Bedford Road, climb Author’s Ridge at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery to see Thoreau’s small headstone, marked simply “Henry,” and Emerson’s massive boulder of pink granite.

Thoreau is said to have planted the garden that still blooms at the Old Manse, a house near the Old North Bridge where, according to Hawthorne, Emerson’s grandfather witnessed the opening of the Revolution from a window. Emerson himself wrote his essay Nature in the house, and Hawthorne took up residence there with his bride, Sophia, in 1842. This house, too, is open for tours.

Even if you don’t need a swimming lesson, follow Thoreau to Walden Pond. Tourists pile off buses for quick snapshots, but it’s better to take an early morning walk near the pond or swim in it on a hot July evening — it closes at dusk. Thoreau’s cabin is gone, but there is a replica of it near the pond, and its furnishings are back in town, at the Concord Museum.

Concord has no Algonquin where writers gather. The Goodwins are regulars at the bar at Serafina’s, where they mingle in a “Cheers”-like setting with neighbors and friends. “We sit at the bar with one guy who does sewage construction, another in the glass business and another who builds benches,” Goodwin’s husband said.

Still, literary references seem to be everywhere. Staying at the downtown Colonial Inn, dating to 1716, visitors find themselves in a place that not only has drawn a parade of famous guests (J.P. Morgan, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Wayne, Bruce Springsteen, Diane Sawyer), but was once home to the Thoreau family.