Jane Austen would be the first to appreciate the subtle layers of irony prompted by the launch of a new £10 note bearing her image.
No sooner were details of the note revealed yesterday near her grave in Winchester Cathedral than critics were scoffing at the Bank of England for using a quotation that was not all it seemed.
The note, which will be universally acknowledged by retailers in September, features a line from Pride and Prejudice that appears to exhort people to read books: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!”
Fans of the author delighted in pointing out that the words were spoken by Miss Bingley, a character who detests reading but pretends otherwise to impress Mr Darcy. How ironic, they crowed, that the bank had missed the irony.
Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, suggested that there was a further irony. The bank had always been aware of the context of the quote and was using it to celebrate Austen’s mastery of irony.
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“It captures much of her spirit,” he said. “You can read it straight — there’s no enjoyment like reading. But also, if you know the 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 that £10 would have meant a lot to Austen. “Ten pounds was half the allowance she received from her father when he was alive,” he said. “It was the amount paid by her publishers for her first novel, Susan, which became, with some rewording, Northanger Abbey.”
The new notes, the first to feature raised dots to aid visually impaired people, have also been criticised for using an “airbrushed” portrait executed after Austen’s death rather than the less flattering “Cassandra portrait” by her sister.