Dr. Marian Wilson Kimber's expertise on Fanny Mendelssohn and historical narratives on women musicians  is featured in a recent article by Elizabeth Winkler, "The Rediscovery of Fanny Mendelssohn," for the Wall Street Journal. 

In an excerpt citing Dr. Wilson Kimber, Winkler writes:

"Scholars emphasize that Fanny's inability to have a public career was due to her upper-class status as much as her gender. The Mendelssohns were a prominent, wealthy family, but they were also Jews newly converted to Christianity, which made their position in German society precarious. 'For an upper-class 19th-century woman, receiving money for musical activities meant compromising her social position,' notes Wilson Kimber. She draws a comparison between Fanny Mendelssohn and Jane Austen, another 19th-century woman who published her work anonymously."

WSJ subscribers may access the article on the publisher's website here. UI students and faculty may read the full article on ProQuest here. 

For more by Dr. Wilson Kimber on this topic, check out her much-cited 2002 article, "The 'Suppresion' of Fanny Mendelssohn: Rethinking Feminist Biography," in the journal, 19th-Century Music.