She wrote numerous articles on plants and Fijian culture, which her daughters published, using a multigraph printing machine from their remote plantation on Nasau, on Rukuruku Bay in the Bua Province on Vanua Levu.
[9][10][11] Her father was engaged with the Australasian Pacific Mail Steam Packet Company for many years before opening his own firm as a wholesale tea supplier in 1862.
It was written as a series of letters to her mother describing her travels and her awakening interest in cultures and flora and fauna that were foreign to England.
According to the review in the Bristol Mercury the book was written by an amateur and riddled with misspellings and "polyglot jargon", but the text showed "a profound knowledge of Latin declensions".
[13] The following year, she produce a novel, In Part to Blame, which was about a young heiress who was tricked into marrying a man who turned out to be a bigamist and murderer.
[15] The reviewer for The Glasgow Herald agreed and elaborated, saying that the story would have been "capital" had the main plot not been abandoned after chapter two and another heroine introduced.
[21] Charles was an electrical engineer and miner, who had been born in Canada and worked in Arizona, California, Mexico and Jamaica, before coming to Africa.
[29][30][31] In 1916, the couple was sued by the Hohonu Diamond Terrace Gold Mining Company, but they prevailed in both cases heard by the King's Bench Division in London.
[32] According to author Phyllis Reeve, in spite of winning the case, after paying the expenses of the suits, their company had no operating funds and Charles went to Christchurch to find work as an engineer.
Nonetheless, there were plenty of local foods, such as bananas, coconuts, lemons, Malay apples, mangoes, oranges, pigs, and seafood to feed them, but European ingredients had to be purchased from Suva and their financial position was unstable because their tenants in New Zealand turned-over frequently.
[38] Within a year of their arrival, Parham had begun to collect and document botanical specimens, which she sent to Harvard University and London's Kew Gardens and Natural History Museum.
[26] She also privately printed from the plantation books like Under Serene Skies, Neta the Pigling: A Crazy Ballad and The Love Sonnets of Senora Carilla das Flores.
[6] Lacking access to conventional publishing houses from their remote location, Beatrice and Helena used a duplicating machine to print the pages of their mother's work and bound them at the plantation.
[26] In addition to her botanical writing, Parham contributed articles on culture and history, as well as poetry to The Girl's Own Paper, the Fiji Times and Pacific Islands Monthly.
[2][26] Her son Laurier made a career with the Colonial Service's Agriculture Department,[24] and her grandson, John Willoughby Parham was the senior government botanist of Fiji for many years before becoming the first curator of the Tasmanian Herbarium, in Hobart, Australia.
[51] The garden Parham planted in Hokitika existed until the 1980s,[26] and the Fijian ribbon root she discovered in 1938 was named taeniophyllum parhamiae in honour of her and her daughters in 1939.
[8][52] Phyllis Reeve, granddaughter of Parham, microfilmed the 44 pamphlets, poetry, and notes printed on the multigraph and donated the film to the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau at the Australian National University in Canberra.
[40] Although reviews of her fictional and literary works were often critical,[13][15][53] her books created with the multigraph printing press were considered to be collectibles because of their unique creation.