← Fame through time1600-1699
The 17th century
Whose working lives fell in the 17th 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 17th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Molière22 decades - 2
Jean de La Fontaine22 decades - 3
Charles Perrault22 decades - 4
Jean Racine22 decades - 5
Pierre Corneille22 decades - 6
Cyrano de Bergerac0 decades - 7
Madame de Sévigné13 decades - 8
Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnannot measured- - 9
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux22 decades - 10
Jean de La Bruyère17 decades - 11
François de La Rochefoucauld18 decades - 12
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle0 decades - 13
Ninon de Lenclos22 decades - 14
Madame de La Fayette17 decades - 15
Madeleine de Scudéry17 decades - 16
Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans0 decades - 17
Paul Scarron22 decades - 18
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier5 decades - 19
Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyonnot measured- - 20
Théophile de Viau19 decades - 21
Honoré d'Urfé22 decades - 22
Hortense Mancini22 decades - 23
Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy0 decades - 24
Thomas Corneille22 decades - 25
Marie de Gournay15 decades
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.