U.K. on the money with Austen note
A new plastic £10 note featuring Jane Austen, one of Britain’s most renowned authors, has gone into circulation.
Apart from the Queen, whose portrait is on all U.K. currency, Austen is only the third woman to feature on a modern-day British banknote, after medical innovator Florence Nightingale and social reformer Elizabeth Fry. She was chosen after a campaign for more female representation.
It’s the first British banknote with a tactile feature, a series of raised dots in the top left-hand corner to help blind and partly sighted users.
The note is made of polymer and is the central bank’s latest effort to make cash harder to counterfeit, after last year’s launch of a similar £5 note that showcases Winston Churchill. A new £20 note featuring artist J.M.W. Turner will follow in 2020.
“Our banknotes serve as repositories of the country’s collective memory, promoting awareness of the United Kingdom’s glorious history and highlighting the contributions of its greatest citizens,” said Bank of England governor Mark Carney. The new polymer notes are similar in material to Canadian polymer money. Carney is a former governor of the Bank of Canada.
Austen, whose novels include Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Sense and Sensibility, is considered one of the great chroniclers of English country life in the Georgian era at the turn of the 19th century.
As well as a portrait of Austen, the note features a quote from Pride and Prejudice: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!”