Trained by her father from a young age with the intent to make her a great musician, Clara (née Wieck) Schumann balanced a lasting and brilliant career as a concert pianist, piano teacher, and composer with her role as the wife and widow of Robert Schumann, and as the matriarch of a large family. She was respected and counted as a friend by multiple contemporary composers and musicians and is remembered today for her dedication to the performance and interpretation of serious music, her compositions, and her pianistic legacy. Her many diaries provide an invaluable window into her daily life and music in girlhood, into her shared life with Robert Schumann as a married woman, and into her continued family life and career after her husband’s death. Clara’s substantial written correspondence also illustrates her relationships with and criticisms of important nineteenth-century figures, details of her professional life such as concert arrangement and related business, and her assessments of contemporary musical and political events.