← 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
Nell Gwyn22 decades - 2
Richard Burbage22 decades - 3
Matthew Henry22 decades - 4
John Owen22 decades - 5
Antoine Arnauld22 decades - 6
Wenceslaus Hollar3 decades - 7
Giovanni Battista Riccioli0 decades - 8
Philipp Jakob Spener15 decades - 9
Johannes Valentinus Andreae12 decades - 10
Madeleine Béjart20 decades - 11
John Smyth22 decades - 12
Bernard de Montfaucon22 decades - 13
Maria Aurora von Königsmarck0 decades - 14
Edward Alleyn22 decades - 15
Jeremy Taylor22 decades - 16
Abraham Bosse22 decades - 17
Armande Béjart18 decades - 18
John Cotton22 decades - 19
Leo Allatius22 decades - 20
Richard Simon22 decades - 21
Pierre Nicole22 decades - 22
Samuel Rutherford20 decades - 23
Gisbertus Voetius0 decades - 24
Armand Jean Le Bouthillier Rancénot measured- - 25
Balthasar Bekker0 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.