Jane Austen, face of 2017... on £2 coin and £10 note
JANE Austen is to appear on new £10 notes and £2 coins – making her second only to the Queen in frequency on British currency. The Royal Mint yesterday revealed that a silhouette of the Pride And Prejudice author will feature on five million £2 coins due out in the spring.
Austen’s portrait will also replace Charles Darwin on a new set of plastic, unrippable £10 notes.
Historians believe Austen may be the first figure other than a reigning monarch to feature on a bank note and a coin at the same time.
The move coincides with the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death in July 1817 at the age of 41. Dr Kevin Clancy, the secretary to the Royal Mint advisory committee, said: ‘The decision to put Jane Austen on the coins was taken about two years ago.
‘The Bank of England has also chosen to put Jane Austen on the new £10 note. I am not aware of this ever happening in the same year. I don’t think it has occurred before.’
Designers of the £2 coin were challenged by the fact that very few images of Austen exist.
The chosen silhouette has been described by the National Portrait Gallery as ‘possibly Jane Austen,’ and featured in the back of her novel Mansfield Park which was published in 1814.
In its New Year announcement, the Royal Mint described Austen as a ‘revolutionary romantic,’
Austen published four novels in four years – Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published a year after she died.
More than 35,000 people had signed a petition calling for the new £10 notes to feature a female face after Elizabeth Fry was replaced by Winston Churchill on £5 notes.
The Royal Mint is also rolling out more than a billion 12-sided £1 coins – designed to be ‘the most secure coin in the world’. The new coin, which will be phased in over six months from March, is slimmer and lighter, and made of nickelbrass and nickel-plated alloy.
A new £2 coin will pay tribute ‘to the defence of Britain’s skies’ during the First World War and a 50p coin will feature Sir Isaac Newton.
Austen also appears on four of the new £5 notes as a microscopic engraving. The collector’s items are said to be worth £50,000 each, and two of the specially produced notes have already been found in the Borders and South Wales.
‘This has never happened before’