← Fame through time1870-1879
The 1870s
Whose names filled the books of the 1870s - anyone at all, however long dead - counted as mentions per million words printed, so a period that simply published more does not inflate anyone.
Talked about then
Whose names appeared most in English books during the 1870s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus72 - 2
Augustus12 - 3
Homer11 - 4
Plato11 - 5
Cicero9.7 - 6
Aristotle8.7 - 7
Socrates6.6 - 8
Virgil6.5 - 9
Herodotus5.0 - 10
Plutarch3.5 - 11
Charlemagne3.3 - 12
Walter Scott3.2 - 13
Ovid2.9 - 14
Livy2.8 - 15
Strabo2.7 - 16
Demosthenes2.5 - 17
Origen2.5 - 18
Cleopatra2.4 - 19
Xenophon2.3 - 20
John the Baptist2.2 - 21
Tertullian2.2 - 22
Bede2.2 - 23
Euclid2.2 - 24
James II, Count of Urgell2.2 - 25
Robert Peel2.2 - 26
William Henry2.2 - 27
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor2.1 - 28
Lord Byron2.0 - 29
Pericles2.0 - 30
Trajan2.0 - 31
Otho1.9 - 32
Euripides1.8 - 33
Hadrian1.8 - 34
Sophocles1.7 - 35
Solon1.7 - 36
Thucydides1.7 - 37
Rembrandt1.6 - 38
John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford1.6 - 39
Ben Jonson1.6 - 40
John Smith1.5 - 41
Richard II1.5 - 42
Aristophanes1.5 - 43
Pythagoras1.4 - 44
Julius Caesar1.4 - 45
John Adams1.4 - 46
Adam Smith1.4 - 47
Pindar1.4 - 48
Columba1.4 - 49
Lucretius1.4 - 50
Alexander the Great1.4 - 51
Ahab1.3 - 52
Vespasian1.3 - 53
Diocletian1.3 - 54
Herbert Spencer1.2 - 55
Hosea1.2 - 56
Charles Dickens1.2 - 57
Irenaeus1.2 - 58
John Henry1.1 - 59
Black Hawk1.1 - 60
Sulla1.1 - 61
George Washington1.1 - 62
John Bull1.1 - 63
Sennacherib1.1 - 64
Domitian1.1 - 65
Oliver Cromwell1.1 - 66
Sydney Smith1.1 - 67
George Eliot1.1 - 68
John Wesley1.1 - 69
Galen1.1 - 70
Hippocrates1.1 - 71
William the Conqueror1.0 - 72
Hesiod1.00 - 73
Epicurus0.98 - 74
William Penn0.98 - 75
Plautus0.97 - 76
Charles Lamb0.96 - 77
Alcibiades0.95 - 78
Richard III0.92 - 79
Catullus0.90 - 80
Polybius0.90 - 81
Thomas More0.89 - 82
Suetonius0.89 - 83
Leigh Hunt0.89 - 84
Appian0.89 - 85
John Stuart Mill0.88 - 86
Lucan0.86 - 87
Jehu0.86 - 88
Horace Walpole0.86 - 89
Phidias0.85 - 90
Abraham Lincoln0.85 - 91
William Hamilton0.84 - 92
Brigham Young0.83 - 93
Caligula0.82 - 94
Benjamin Franklin0.79 - 95
Isaac Newton0.79 - 96
Sallust0.79 - 97
Sappho0.78 - 98
Catiline0.77 - 99
Anne Boleyn0.76 - 100
Henry Clay0.76
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1870s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Friedrich Nietzsche15 decades - 2
Mark Twain16 decades - 3
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky10 decades - 4
William McKinley16 decades - 5
Grover Cleveland14 decades - 6
Claude Monet14 decades - 7
Émile Zola16 decades - 8
Edward VII13 decades - 9
Sarah Bernhardt15 decades - 10
John D. Rockefeller14 decades - 11
Andrew Carnegie14 decades - 12
Leopold II of Belgium9 decades - 13
Paul Cézanne12 decades - 14
Pope Pius X12 decades - 15
Antonín Dvořák0 decades - 16
Empress Elisabeth of Austria0 decades - 17
Empress Dowager Cixi5 decades - 18
Pierre-Auguste Renoir12 decades - 19
Thomas Hardy18 decades - 20
Abdul Hamid II13 decades - 21
J. P. Morgan16 decades - 22
Auguste Rodin14 decades - 23
Henry James18 decades - 24
Ramakrishna14 decades - 25
Peter Kropotkin11 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.