Jane Austen: (1775 – 1817)

Jane Austen started putting pen to paper when she was just a teenager and went on to write six major novels which revealed what life was like in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

While she was alive, she actually published her books anonymously, so nobody knew her as a writer. It is widely accepted that she never got the credit she deserved until after her death.

Now, just over 200 years since she died, millions of people carry Jane around in their pockets because her face was on the £10 note as a way of marking just what an enormous impact her work has centuries later.