[1] As a child, Parnell studied mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy, and she could fluently speak and write in several European languages.

[citation needed] Parnell's parents separated when she was young, and soon after her father died in July 1859, she and her mother moved to Dalkey.

– The serpent's curse upon you lies – you writhe within the dust You fill your mouths with beggars' swill, you grovel for a crust Your masters set their blood-stained heels upon your shameful heads Yet they are kind – they leave you still their ditches for your beds!

– Oh by the God who made us all, the master and the serf Rise up and swear to hold this day your own green Irish turf!

While living in Dublin in 1864, she began publishing her poetry under the pseudonym "Aleria" in The Irish People, the newspaper of the Fenian Brotherhood.

Most of her later work was published in The Boston Pilot, the best-known Irish newspaper in the United States during the nineteenth century.

Parnell's brother, Charles, became active in the Land League, an organisation that fought for poor tenant farmers, in 1879 and she strongly supported him.

In Ireland, Anna became the president of the Ladies' Land League, and the women held many protests and quickly became more radical than the men, to the resentment of the male leaders.