My work on fairy tale history suggests that the genre came into being in Renaissance Italy and that printed books  subsequently spread fairy tales throughout Europe and beyond.

In the area of British books for children 1470-1770, I focus on the late seventeenth-early eighteenth-century  differentiation  of children as intended readers. Within children's literature as a whole I have specialized in the international genre of reworked Bible stories for children, whose editings from 1170 to the 1990s indicates that for most stories the intended readers'  socio-economic status.played a much larger role in the way in which stories were edited than the religious affiliation of the author/editor.

I've also worked extensively with illustrations in secular (fairy tales) and religious (canonical Bible and children's Bible) literature.