Alice Munro immortalised on Canadian currency

The acclaimed author appears on a silver collector's coin, joining Jane Austen and Astrid Lindgren, who appear on UK and Swedish banknotes respectively

Robert Graves may have had it that "there's no money in poetry, but then there's no poetry in money either", but those running the world's mints might choose to differ, with Alice Munro the latest author behind Jane Austen and Astrid Lindgren to be honoured with an immortalisation in currency.

A silver collector's coin from the Royal Canadian Mint was unveiled yesterday, intended to celebrate the world's newest Nobel literature laureate Munro's "tremendous body of work" and to be a "beautiful and meaningful keepsake for readers, writers and collectors alike", according to the Mint's president, Ian Bennett. It will feature an "ethereal female figure emerging from a pen as a representation of one of the many central characters from Alice Munro's beloved short stories", said the Mint, as well as an image of an open book, inscribed with a passage from Munro's The View from Castle Rock.