New £10 Note Celebrating Jane Austen Unveiled On 200th Anniversary Of Her Death

New £10 Note Celebrating Jane Austen Unveiled On 200th Anniversary Of Her Death

A new £10 note celebrating Jane Austen has been unveiled by the Bank of England on the 200th anniversary of the author's death.

The new tenner, which will be issued on September 14, is the first Bank of England banknote with a tactile feature to help blind and partially-sighted users.

The new tactile feature is a series of raised dots in the top left-hand corner of the banknote, developed with the help of the RNIB.

Features already incorporated into banknotes to help vision-impaired people include different sizing, bold numerals, raised print and differing colour palettes.

Bank of England Governor Mark Carney unveiled the design of the new £10 banknote at Winchester Cathedral, where the Pride And Prejudice and Sense And Sensibility author was buried after her death in 1817 at the age of 41.

The design of the new note includes a portrait of Austen commissioned by her family, Austen's writing table and a quote from Pride And Prejudice: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"

Mr Carney said: "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.

"The new £10 note celebrates Jane Austen's work. Austen's novels have a universal appeal and speak as powerfully today as they did when they were first published."

People can continue to spend the existing paper £10 notes for now. They will be phased out gradually as they are banked.

Legal tender status of the paper £10 featuring Charles Darwin will eventually be withdrawn in Spring 2018. The exact date will be announced at least three months in advance.

Like the £5 note already in circulation featuring Sir Winston Churchill, the new £10 banknote is made from polymer.

It is expected to last at least two-and-a-half times longer than the current paper £10 notes - around five years in total - and stay in better condition during day-to-day use.

The transition to polymer has sparked controversy after the Bank confirmed that an "extremely small amount" of tallow - or animal fat - was used to produce polymer pellets, which were part of the production process for creating the notes.

In February, the Bank took the decision that this £10 note would be manufactured on the same polymer material. At the point the decision was taken, the Bank had already printed 275 million £10 notes at a cost of £24 million.

The Bank held off signing supply contracts for the £20 polymer note featuring artist JMW Turner, which is due to be released in 2020, to better understand "the range of public opinion" surrounding the use of tallow in banknote production and explore potential plant-based substitutes like palm and coconut oil. A public consultation on the issue closed in May.

Victoria Cleland, the Bank's chief cashier, said: "The new £10 note marks the next exciting step in our introduction of cleaner, safer, stronger polymer banknotes, and I am grateful to the cash industry for their work towards a smooth transition.

"I am delighted that the Jane Austen £10 note incorporates an innovative tactile feature, which I hope will greatly benefit blind and partially sighted users."

Austen is known for providing astute insights into life through wit and social observation.

Born on December 16 1775, in Steventon, Hampshire, Austen was one of eight siblings.

She started to write short, comic stories in childhood, and her first works were published anonymously.

Sense And Sensibility was published in 1811, followed by Pride And Prejudice in 1813, originally titled First Impressions. Mansfield Park, Emma, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey followed.

While her work gave her little personal fame during her lifetime, Austen's novels started appearing on university reading lists around the start of the 20th century, with many films later exploring the themes of her writing.

Austen died on July 18 1817.

In a private journal written in 1826, Sir Walter Scott said of Austen: "That young lady had a talent for describing the involvement and feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with... What a pity such a gifted creature died so early."

Mr Carney was asked why the image of Austen, an engraving by William Home Lizars, was chosen for the note, instead of the original sketch that it was based on, drawn by her sister Cassandra Austen.

The choice of picture has prompted some criticism, with suggestions that the engraving had been chosen as it was the equivalent of an "airbrushed author's photo".

Mr Carney said: "The advantage of the engraving is that it is much finer, that allowed us to use the image for the note, otherwise we would have had to have interpreted an image from the image, that is why the decision was made."

Asked if the unveiling of the note featuring a female figure, following the announcement of a female Dr Who, marked a week of girl power, Mr Carney replied: "I welcome the Dr Who announcement.

"I think this is a serious issue, there were a series of barriers in Austen's time and barriers that still exist, whether in finance or entertainment, and what can be done to remove those conscious or actual barriers.

"One of the things we have been trying to do is create a pipeline of financiers where a position can be reached where half of our intake are women and that will help make it not a question of something that happens in a certain week but as a matter of course."

The new £10 note features a quote from the character Miss Bingley in Pride and Prejudice, who said: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"

When asked why this quote was chosen, given that Miss Bingley was not keen on reading, Mr Carney replied: "It's two things; it captures much of her spirit, that is the quote, you can read it straight, there is no enjoyment like reading, and we agree with that.

"If you know her work, you can enjoy the irony of that, it draws out some of the aspects of her social satire, it works on many levels."

Mr Carney said: "Forty per cent of all transactions still use cash, virtually everyone still uses some cash and it is still the most popular form of transaction relative to debit cards or credit cards, so people use them, they look at them, they know who's on it and this country has a tremendously rich and varied history across all the disciplines.

"What we try to do is try to capture some of that, some of the most prominent citizens of the United Kingdom of all time and capture some of their accomplishments that bring out the collective memory.

"It's fitting, you see it with Jane Austen, the breadth and appreciation of her work is stronger today than it has ever been."

Campaigners for the visually-impaired welcomed the new note, which was designed and printed by De La Rue.

Wendy Rankin, director of mobility services at the charity Guide Dogs, said: "We're delighted that the Bank of England has included a tactile feature on the new polymer £10 note, ensuring that people with sight loss can continue to use cash with confidence.

"The charity Guide Dogs works hard to make sure that people who are blind or partially sighted are not left out of life. We welcome what the Bank of England has done to support people with sight loss.

"We know that including something so simple as a tactile feature on the new polymer £10 note helps people with vision impairments to live their lives independently."

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