[1] Her father was the Michigan Attorney General, and her grandfather was U.S. Representative Jonas Platt.
From 1892 Parmele contributed philosophical articles and short stories to reviews and magazines.
[2] Her "Short History of ..." books included volumes on France, Russia, England, United States, Germany, Spain, and Italy.
[3] Parmele ventured beyond straight historical writing with Ariel, or the Author's World (1892), in which a character has the power to transport himself to a planet orbiting Earth, "created by atoms obeying the wills of writers", thus inhabited by fictional creations such as Frankenstein's monster.
[1][20] She lived with Mrs. J. J. Tierney in her last years, and died when she was struck by a motorcycle in 1911, at the age of 67, in New York City.