Writers often daydream about making money, but they almost never daydream about being money. After all, the honor of appearing on a bank note is terribly posthumous. For Jane Austen, who will appear on the British 10-pound note probably beginning in 2017, it comes 200 years after her death. She may find the company a bit dull.
Imagine a hall in which all the figures who have appeared on bank notes over the years have gathered. The room is crowded with men, nearly all of them kings, liberators, revolutionaries, politicians, generals. Scattered throughout are a few painters, philosophers, scientists, writers and explorers. The American deputation is rich, if that is the right word, in male politicians, a dour delegation.
The small group of women includes queens, princesses and suffragists. And soon there will be Austen, who will become the only non-monarchical woman appearing on British currency when Elizabeth Fry, a prison reformer, is replaced by Winston Churchill on the 5-pound note.
The United States should follow Britain's lead and welcome notable women to our bills. They need not be writers, though that would be welcome. There has been an effort in the past few years to remove Ulysses Grant from his $50 post and install Ronald Reagan. That is not a step in the right direction.
As for Jane Austen, no one knew better that money talks. It is the subtext of her world. The new Austen design includes an inapt quotation from "Pride and Prejudice" — "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!" — which is uttered by a character who is barely a reader. Better by far if Austen peers at us in silence, looking wryly at the world as she does in her novels.
Verlyn Klinkenborg writes for The New York Times.