“I declare that after all there is no enjoyment like reading”

Jane Austen will grace the reverse side of the UK £10 bank note when it is introduced in September. It was heralded today in London with the  unveiling of a statue of the author in Basingstoke Market Place where she no doubt shopped. The honour of showing the new note went to a Canadian, Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. Among notations on the new bill is one of her scholarly observations. “I declare that after all there is no enjoyment like reading.” As is known, Austen’s fortunes proceeded slowly from the time of her first work, which  was published anonymously. But the publication of Sense and Sensibility (1811), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1815) she saw success in her own lifetime even as she died in 1817 at just 41. Much posthumous appreciation followed and in 1869 a nephew published the hugely popular volume A Memoir of Jane Austen. By the beginning of the 20th Century Jane Austen was a super star of English literature and her fame continues into the era of her likeness on the nation’s currency.