Vast research and documentation have gone into this study of the Barrett family, from its known beginnings in Jamaica in 1655. Dissipation and progress, neck and neck, make up successive generations of the Barretts, wealthy landowners. The Brownings and the Tittles traced back to 1690, with acknowledgment of a trace of the tarbrush in his -- not her -- family. Finally, the story of their courtship and marriage, with emphasis placed on her addiction to opium and morphine. Extraordinary from angle of geneological investigation, but adds little of importance to the knowledge of Elizabeth Barrett or Robert Browning and their contribution to literature.