← 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
John Milton22 decades - 3
Daniel Defoe22 decades - 4
Jean de La Fontaine22 decades - 5
Charles Perrault22 decades - 6
John Donne22 decades - 7
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz21 decades - 8
Pocahontas22 decades
- 9
Jean Racine22 decades - 10
Pierre Corneille22 decades - 11
Mumtaz Mahal9 decades - 12
Ahmed I2 decades - 13
Francisco Quevedo22 decades - 14
Murad IV4 decades - 15
Cyrano de Bergerac0 decades - 16
Ben Jonson22 decades - 17
Pedro Calderón de la Barca22 decades - 18
John Bunyan22 decades - 19
Matsuo Bashō0 decades - 20
John Dryden22 decades - 21
Osman II0 decades - 22
Madame de Sévigné13 decades - 23
Aphra Behn18 decades - 24
Nur Jahan11 decades - 25
Baltasar Gracián14 decades - 26
Charles de Batz de Castelmore d'Artagnannot measured- - 27
Guru Tegh Bahadur6 decades - 28
Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux22 decades - 29
Elizabeth Charlotte, Madame Palatine11 decades - 30
George Herbert22 decades - 31
Michiel de Ruyter0 decades - 32
Jean de La Bruyère17 decades - 33
Tirso de Molina22 decades - 34
Jahanara Begum0 decades - 35
François de La Rochefoucauld18 decades - 36
Evliya Çelebi2 decades - 37
Sambhaji11 decades - 38
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle0 decades - 39
Ninon de Lenclos22 decades - 40
Cotton Mather22 decades - 41
Tukaram15 decades - 42
Thomas Browne22 decades - 43
Madame de La Fayette17 decades - 44
Giambattista Basile15 decades - 45John Webster22 decades
- 46
Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen8 decades - 47Gwanghaegun of Joseonnot measured-
- 48
Zeb-un-Nisa0 decades - 49
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tynenot measured- - 50
Andrew Marvell22 decades - 51
Madeleine de Scudéry17 decades - 52
John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochesternot measured- - 53
Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans0 decades - 54
Anne Bradstreet17 decades - 55
Madame d'Aulnoy1 decades - 56
Angelus Silesius20 decades - 57
Paul Scarron22 decades - 58
Guru Har Rai0 decades - 59
Giambattista Marino12 decades - 60
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier5 decades - 61
Andreas Gryphius22 decades - 62
John Evelyn22 decades - 63
Juan Ruiz de Alarcón15 decades - 64
Gülnuş Sultannot measured- - 65
John Fletcher22 decades - 66
Thomas Middleton22 decades - 67
Izaak Walton22 decades - 68
Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendonnot measured- - 69
Joost van den Vondel0 decades - 70
Richard Baxter22 decades - 71
Gu Yanwu8 decades - 72
Thomas Nashe20 decades - 73Khushal Khan Khattak0 decades
- 74
Jeanne-Marie Bouvier de La Motte Guyonnot measured- - 75
Scipione Borghese1 decades - 76
John Aubrey22 decades - 77
Wang Fuzhi9 decades - 78
Martin Opitz22 decades - 79
Pu Songling6 decades - 80
Chikamatsu Monzaemon0 decades - 81
Thomas Fuller22 decades - 82
Symeon of Polotsk19 decades - 83
Emilia Lanier0 decades - 84
Ihara Saikaku0 decades - 85
Théophile de Viau19 decades - 86
Friedrich Spee21 decades - 87
Honoré d'Urfé22 decades - 88
Hortense Mancini22 decades - 89
Dimitry of Rostov19 decades - 90
Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy0 decades - 91
Thomas Traherne11 decades - 92
Gioachino Greco2 decades - 93
Magdalena de Pazzi22 decades - 94
Roshanara Begum0 decades - 95
Thomas Corneille22 decades - 96
Marie de Gournay15 decades - 97
Nikola VII Zrinskinot measured- - 98
James Harrington22 decades - 99
Mary of Jesus of Ágreda2 decades - 100
Ivan Gundulić0 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.