The face of Jane Austen, the nineteenth century English writer and the first female author to appear on a UK banknote, has been unveiled on the new polymer tenner launched by the Bank of England to commemorate her death 200 years ago. The BoE has used the doe-eyed portrait by J.E Austen-Leigh of 1870, which looks like Victorian airbrushing compared to the contemporary sketch of her sister Cassandra in 1810.
Who is this mysterious smiling doll-face who died in 1817 who now finds herself on a twenty first century banknote that feels like crisp packet material?
She doesn’t look like the social satirist with a biting wit in Cassandra’s portrait, below; more like one of the fictional undead in the film Pride and Prejudice and the Zombies. Said Paula Byrne, her biographer “She looks like a cosy middle-class writer”.
She doesn’t look like the social satirist with a biting wit in Cassandra’s portrait, below; more like one of the fictional undead in the film Pride and Prejudice and the Zombies. Said Paula Byrne, her biographer “She looks like a cosy middle-class writer”.
Her sister’s rough, amateurish drawing has life in it and to a face reader shows a spiky-chinned, sharp-eyed observer of human nature, including the dark side. She has a metal shaped face, often found on writers, artists and independent thinkers.
Her thin lips of the crisp communicator are not plumped and smiling but holding inner tension and emotional control. They're even a bit waspish! Definitely not a cosy or saccharine type. In Chinese face reading the size of the mouth indicates the amount of wealth a person can attract - and Jane struggled with money all her life. Her eyes have a lively, spontaneous energy, and the mercurial quality of the fast thinker and fast writer - they’re not childlike eyes or vacant like those on the new currency. She's even got bags under her eyes! And that thin pointed nose: she's not that comfortable to be around and quite the loner.
Mystery solved!
Her thin lips of the crisp communicator are not plumped and smiling but holding inner tension and emotional control. They're even a bit waspish! Definitely not a cosy or saccharine type. In Chinese face reading the size of the mouth indicates the amount of wealth a person can attract - and Jane struggled with money all her life. Her eyes have a lively, spontaneous energy, and the mercurial quality of the fast thinker and fast writer - they’re not childlike eyes or vacant like those on the new currency. She's even got bags under her eyes! And that thin pointed nose: she's not that comfortable to be around and quite the loner.
Mystery solved!