`Frankenstein' Gets Spot on U.K. 2-Pound Coin in 2018 Collection

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. will make new coins this year to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley's “Frankenstein'' as well as commemorate a century since women started gaining the right to vote.

Designs on special two-pound coins will also honor the end of the First World War and the creation of the Royal Air Force in 1918, the U.K.'s Royal Mint said in a statement.

Each year the Royal Mint, the world's largest exporter of coins, releases commemorative designs to mark major anniversaries, such as the deaths of national figures or prominent historical events. 

Frankenstein will feature on a two-pound coin as well, but without any picture of the monster of Shelley's Gothic novel. One side of the coin has the word “Frankenstein” in the steel-colored center, with the description “The Modern Prometheus” in the yellow outer ring.

A 50-pence coin will mark a century since the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which first gave women over 30 the right to vote in Britain. Servicemen over 19 and men over 21 also got the right at the same time.

Coins were minted in 2017 to mark the bicentenary of the death of author Jane Austen and the 1,000th anniversary of the coronation of King Canute.

The mint, based in South Wales, traces its history back more than a millennium, to the time when Alfred the Great had his monogram struck on coins in 880.

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Mayes in London at jmayes9@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rebecca Penty at rpenty@bloomberg.net, Thomas Mulier, Steve Geimann

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