The term "has a slightly derogatory connotation, as if the scale of the research has gotten out of control with people cranking out studies on perhaps less and less important aspects of Darwin's work"; but it was originally a self-designation of the scholars who began re-evaluating Darwin and studying his manuscripts and correspondence in the second half of the 20th century.
However, all this made up only a fraction of Darwin's correspondence and other unpublished writings, and much of what was published was incomplete.
Earlier volumes of published letters are included, but it does not duplicate the Correspondence Project publications.
Studies of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Georges Cuvier, Charles Lyell, Thomas Henry Huxley, Richard Owen, Alfred Russel Wallace and many others have all been influenced to a greater or lesser degree by the work of the Darwin Industry.
Because of the unusual hybrid nature of The Origin of Species as both a popular and scientific work, one major focus of the Darwin Industry has been the role of popularization and education in the spread of Darwin's theory: the popular work of Huxley, Ernst Haeckel, Herbert Spencer, and most dramatically, Robert Chambers (who wrote the 1844 sensation Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation), is increasingly seen as important in its own right in the history of evolutionary thought.