Everything you need to know about new plastic £10 note - including which serial numbers could make you a tidy profit

The new £10 note featuring author Jane Austen has entered circulation.

It is the second currency in England to be printed on polymer plastic, a material that will last 2.5 times longer than paper, following the launch of a new five pound note last year.

Austen will replace Charles Darwin on the £10, joining Adam Smith, Winston Churchill and Boulton and Watt in a cast of historic figures that the Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney, said helps currency "serve as a collective memory for a country".

The Queen will be presented with the first new tenner - with serial number AA01 000001. Prince Philip will be given the second and Theresa May the third.

Collectors (Euronext: MLCOL.NX - news) will be on the hunt for very low serial numbers - those beginning AA01. The lowest number of the new £5 note issued to the public, AA01000017, sold for £4,105 at a charity auction last year.

Popular (NasdaqGS: BPOP - news) serial numbers for the new £10 note are expected to be the birthday of Jane Austen, 16 121775, and her death, 18 071817.

Austen's inclusion was met with bemusement when it was unveiled in June , thanks to the author's quotation: "I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!"

It is not a direct Austen quote but a line from Pride and Prejudice uttered by Miss Caroline Bingley - and one the character doesn't believe in the slightest.

Wealthy, shallow and conceited, Miss Bingley follows her praise of reading with a huge yawn. "When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library," she adds, before throwing her book aside in a fit of boredom.

Austen's point is that Miss Bingley's love for reading is a pretence - one enabled by her large fortune and driven by her desire to impress eligible and wealthy bachelor Mr Darcy.

That makes its inclusion on a bank note somewhat ironic. In June, some even called for the quotation to be changed.

Other critics accused the designers of "prettifying" Austen or objected to the use of a pork-derived substance in the polymer material.

The objections, however, haven't prompted a change to the design.

The new bank note includes security features - including holograms windows with images that change colour when tilted - to protect against fraud.

A cluster of raised dots in the upper corner will also help blind and partially sighted people identify the note.

While it will be in circulation from Thursday, the old £10 won't disappear until Spring 2018. Until then, it won't be a problem to continue using the old paper notes while the Bank of England gradually removes them.

New Scottish £10 notes are also being released over the next four weeks. Polymer Scottish £5 notes were released in 2015, and Northern Ireland has used polymer notes since 2000.