Born at Encounter Bay, Parker was a relative of the novelist Simpson Newland (q.v.). She was brought up in the Darling Downs area of Queensland, with Aboriginal children as companions. An Aboriginal girl saved Parker's life when two of her sisters drowned in the Darling, and later shared the school lessons given by her mother, Mrs Field. The family moved to Adelaide in 1872.
In 1875 Parker married the pastoralist K. Langloh Parker at St Peter's Glenelg and seven years later moved to Bangate Station near Walgett, New South Wales. Her description of this time was published in 1982 by Marcie Muir (q.v.) as My Bush Book: K Langloh Parker's 1890s Story of Outback Station Life. Here and in Queensland she collected Aboriginal legends and stories, the first to collect and publish them in a systematic way, writing under her husband's name. She also wrote a serious anthropological study of the Narran River Aborigines (The Euahlayi Tribe, 1905) and A Gardening Calendar (with Christina Wright, 1917) and in addition wrote for The Bulletin, Lone Hand, Pastoralists' Review and other journals.
After Langloh's death she married Percival Stow (St Margaret's, London, 1905) and they eventually returned to South Australia where they took an active part in the social and cultural life of the city and established the P. Stow Library at St Peter's School Collegiate, 1937. She died at the age of 84 and was buried at the St Jude's, Brighton cemetery.
