← Fame through time1500-1599
The 16th century
Whose working lives fell in the 16th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 16th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
William Shakespeare22 decades - 2
Christopher Marlowe22 decades - 3
John Knox22 decades - 4
Philip Sidney22 decades - 5
Thomas Wyatt22 decades - 6
Thomas Kyd16 decades - 7
John Harington22 decades - 8
Richard Hakluyt22 decades - 9
Hamnet Shakespeare0 decades - 10
John Lyly21 decades - 11
Anne Askew14 decades - 12
George Buchanan22 decades - 13
Roger Ascham22 decades - 14
Michael Drayton22 decades - 15
David Beaton10 decades - 16
Samuel Daniel22 decades - 17
William Morgan22 decades - 18
Thomas Bodley22 decades - 19
John Stow22 decades - 20
Thomas Elyot22 decades - 21
David Lyndsay14 decades - 22
Arthur Golding21 decades - 23
Richard Gwyn0 decades - 24
Jane Anger0 decades - 25Arthur Brooke13 decades
- 26
Andrew Melville20 decades - 27
John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxfordnot measured- - 28Henry Chettle17 decades
- 29John Penrynot measured-
- 30
Patrick Adamson6 decades - 31
Henry Spelmannot measured- - 32Anne Lockenot measured-
- 33
Anne Howard, Countess of Arundelnot measured- - 34
Cecily Heronnot measured- - 35
Robert Normannot measured- - 36Stephen Gossonnot measured-
- 37
Thomas Sternholdnot measured- - 38Margaret Seymournot measured-
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.