Between 1815 and 1860 American women began to move out of isolated domesticity and into the public sphere. This coincided with the rise of a market economy and gender-segregated work and home sites. Definition of women's work accompanied efforts to define the home and delineate middle class values, leading to a definition of the republican home as a nonpartisan political domain where women were particularly responsible for fostering American civic virtues. For this task, middle-class women writers urged women to educate themselves in history and politics, and books of history and historical novels became popular reading. Women such as Emma Willard, Lydia Child, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and others developed a republican domestic ideology that fostered a conservative republicanism, giving women a role in the republic while shutting them out from direct political power.