[4] In 1879 Anna joined her sister, Fanny Parnell (1848–1882), a poet, in New York where they raised money in support of the Irish National Land League.

The sisters worked closely with their brother Charles and Michael Davitt but were critical of how the funds raised in America were being used in Ireland.

Public opinion at the time was against women in politics, but the Ladies' Land League was founded on 31 January 1881 with Anna as its effective leader.

They distributed Land League wooden huts to shelter evicted tenant families and by the beginning of 1882 they had 500 branches, thousands of women members and considerable publicity.

Charles, who distrusted Anna's understanding of politics, agreed to provide the money under the condition that the Ladies' Land League be disbanded.

[2] Andrew Kettle stated that Anna had "a better knowledge of the social and political forces of Ireland than any person, man or woman, I have ever met.

She wrote an angry account of her Land League experiences in Tale of a Great Sham, in reaction to Davitt's Fall of feudalism (1904),[2] but it was not published until 1986.

[2] Parnell received a small inheritance from her mother's estate in 1910, and moved to Ilfracombe, Devon living under the assumed name Cerisa Palmer.

[2][9] Shortly after her death, a former member of the Children's Land League, JP Dunne, called for Parnell to be repatriated for burial in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.

[2][12] In September 2021, 110 years after her death, Anna Parnell was honoured with a blue plaque on the Allied Irish Bank wall at the top of O’Connell Street, in Dublin city centre, the site of the Ladies Land League which she founded with her sister Fanny in 1881.