Eileen Alannah Joyce is now considered to be one of the great pianists of the 20th century. Her career on the international stage spanned over 30 years and took her to every continent. During the 1930s and 1940s, her many recordings made her extremely popular in the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia. She was especially well-received throughout the Second World War and, at the height of her career, Joyce was compared in popular esteem with Gracie Fields and Vera Lynn. Indeed, when she performed in the United States in 1950, Irving Kolodin called her 'the world's greatest unknown pianist' (qtd in Jeremy Siepman The Piano 1998, p. 168). Joyce became even more well-known during the 1950s, a period when she was able to play 50 sold-out recitals a year in London alone.
An imaginative account of Joyce's early life, Prelude, written for children by Clare H. Abrahall, became a best-seller. A 1953 feature film was also based on the book. Despite her fame, Joyce's achievements were overlooked in the years following her retirement in the early 1960s. This oversight has since been corrected, however, following the release of her recordings (many of which were 78 rpm records) onto CD format.
