Elinor was active from about 1899 to 1929. Before she married, Elinor Monsell was one of the illustrators that worked with W.B. Yeats, whom she met in 1899 at Coole Park. He appreciated her woodcuts, and asked her to create a logo for the Abbey Theatre. She created a pearwood engraving of a romantic image of Queen Maeve with one of her wolfhounds that appeared on the Abbey Theatre programmes beginning in 1904. She created the cover for Stephen Gwynn's "The Fair Hills of Ireland", which was published in 1906. In 1907 Dun Emer Press's first pressmark was a wood engraving that she made of Lady Emer beside a tree.