Darwin Online and the Evolution of the Darwin Industry

Within weeks of Charles Darwin’s death in April 1882 accounts of his life began to appear around the world in the form of obituaries. These were followed by numerous biographies over the ensuing years. Most important of these was the three-volume Life and letters of Charles Darwin (1887) edited by his son Francis Darwin (1848–1925). This not only made available a large number of letters to and from Darwin but also reproduced most of his privately written autobiography and extracts from other manuscripts as well as many recollections from family, friends and colleagues. This work arguably no longer receives the attention it deserves. Reading it today one is sometimes surprised to see how many recent discoveries and themes were already apparent in this foundational work. It was followed by two volumes of More letters of Charles Darwin in 1903. In 1909, the centenary of Darwin’s birth and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Origin of species, Francis Darwin published transcriptions of Darwin’s 1842 and 1844 species theory sketches in Foundations of the Origin of Species. These materials, in addition to Darwin’s own publications, were the basis for the majority of writings about Darwin until his granddaughter, Nora Barlow (1885–1989), began a remarkable career of publishing additional transcriptions of Darwin manuscripts. 1 In the wake of the 1959 centenary celebrations of the Origin of species the next important instalment of Darwin materials occurred with the publication of Darwin’s theoretical and transmutation notebooks by Paul Barrett, Gavin de Beer and M. J. Rowlands between 1960 and 1967. 2 These, combined with the publication in 1960 of the Handlist of Darwin papers at the University Library Cambridge, 3 triggered interest in the Darwin Archive, deposited at Cambridge University Library after the Second World War. In a sense the modern Darwin industry had begun. By the late 1960s academic historians and philosophers of science began to dominate the field of Darwin studies in place of scientists. Since that time the changing trends of the discipline as a whole have naturally been reflected in Darwin studies. A straight line from his early theorizing to modern evolutionary biology was found to be overly simplistic, and contextual and social studies of science became predominate. Many important and highly sophisticated focused studies opened up ever more novel aspects of Darwin’s life and work. 4