[1] She gained a scholarship at Royal College of Music (RCM) in 1937, where she studied piano and composition with Kendall Taylor, theory under Herbert Howells and history and criticism under Frank Howes.
[1][2] Despite this, while at the RCM she gave the first UK performance of Maurice Ravel's Piano Concerto for the Left Hand.
She was devoted to the music of Robert Schumann (also an aspiring pianist whose career was curtailed by injury), and wrote two books about him (1948, "Master Musicians" series; 1972).
[1][4] For her contribution to Schumanniana, she won the Robert Schumann Prize awarded by his birthplace, the city of Zwickau, in 1991.
[1] After her death her executors instituted the Joan Chissell Robert Schumann Prize for Pianists at the RCM.