Jane Austen Set To Appear On New £10 Note Plans have been drawn up to put the novelist Jane Austen on the £10 banknote. The author of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma is a "clear candidate" to replace Charles Darwin on the new note, the Bank of England's outgoing governor Sir Mervyn King said. It follows criticism that with Sir Winston Churchill to take the place of social reformer Elizabeth Fry on the £5 note as early as 2016, there would be no female figures on UK currency apart from the Queen. During his final public appearance Sir Mervyn said Austen was "waiting in the wings" as the likely replacement for Darwin. He told the Treasury Select Committee that the novelist had already been chosen as a "reserve" figure in case the Churchill £5 note suffers "technical problems." The design for the Churchill note was released in April Sir Mervyn said: "Any time we produce a note there are always two notes we have running in parallel - the figure we are actually using and a reserve figure, so if there are technical problems with the first note we can run with the second. That second figure often becomes a figure on the following note. The figure that we've been working with for two years, we've said already that it's a woman - I can tell you today it's Jane Austen. That clearly is a candidate for the £10 note down the road. Some 50 labour MPs and peers have backed a campaign to keep a woman on British banknotes. Plans have not been finalised for Churchill's appearance on the £5, but they currently show his portrait alongside a view of Westminster with Parliament's clock showing 3 o'clock - the approximate time on May 13, 1940, when he declared in a speech: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." British personalities have featured on the back of banknotes since 1970 and other figures have included Charles Dickens, the scientist Michael Faraday and composer Sir Edward Elgar. The final decision on who appears on banknotes will be made by Sir Mervyn's successor Mark Carney, a Canadian.