2017-01-02 Mon

Jane Austen is considered to be one of the greatest female novelists. 200 years after her death, her picture would be featured on a British coin and a banknote at the same time. Nobody except the Queen has got the honour to be featured on both, a coin and a note. The Royal Mint officially announced that commemorative £2 coins will be issued to celebrate this great author. Five million coins will be released for circulation featuring a silhouette of Austen in the spring. New plastic £10 notes will also be replacing Charles Darwin notes at the same time.

Florence Nightingale, the nurse appeared on £10 notes from 1975 and a £2 commemorative coin in 2010. It is for the first time in England’s history that both a note and a coin are being released at the same time celebrating the same personality. Officials said that the decision for depicting Jane Austen on the coins was taken about two years ago. The coin release would also coincide with the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death in 1817 at the age of 41.

A portrait of Jane Austen is featured in the back of Mansfield Park when the book was published in 1814. A silhouette of this portrait is placed at the centre of the coin with stripes behind indicating Regency wallpaper. The designers of the coin imagined one of the houses featured in Jane Austen’s books.

A microscopic image of Austen was engraved on to just four £5 notes by the artist Graham Short. The rare notes are valued at £50,000 each. Two of the four £5 notes have been found, one in Wales and one in Scotland.

Austen is the author of famous novels like Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma. Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published one year after her death.