← Fame through time1880-1889
The 1880s
Whose names filled the books of the 1880s - 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 1880s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus59 - 2
Augustus10 - 3
Homer10 - 4
Plato9.5 - 5
Cicero8.3 - 6
Aristotle7.9 - 7
Virgil5.7 - 8
Socrates4.9 - 9
Herodotus4.0 - 10
Plutarch3.1 - 11
Charlemagne3.0 - 12
Walter Scott2.8 - 13
Ovid2.6 - 14
Demosthenes2.3 - 15
George Eliot2.3 - 16
Cleopatra2.3 - 17
Euclid2.2 - 18
William Henry2.2 - 19
Origen2.2 - 20
Livy2.1 - 21
Bede2.1 - 22
Xenophon2.0 - 23
James II, Count of Urgell2.0 - 24
Johns Hopkins1.9 - 25
John the Baptist1.9 - 26
John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford1.9 - 27
Strabo1.9 - 28
Pericles1.9 - 29
Robert Peel1.8 - 30
Trajan1.8 - 31
Tertullian1.8 - 32
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor1.8 - 33
John Smith1.8 - 34
Hadrian1.8 - 35
Herbert Spencer1.7 - 36
John Adams1.7 - 37
Sophocles1.7 - 38
Euripides1.7 - 39
Solon1.6 - 40
Thucydides1.5 - 41
George Washington1.5 - 42
Richard II1.5 - 43
Lord Byron1.4 - 44
Otho1.4 - 45
Ben Jonson1.4 - 46
Pindar1.4 - 47
Julius Caesar1.3 - 48
Abraham Lincoln1.3 - 49
Matthew Arnold1.3 - 50
Aristophanes1.3 - 51
Adam Smith1.3 - 52
Rembrandt1.2 - 53
Black Hawk1.2 - 54
Lucretius1.2 - 55
Pythagoras1.2 - 56
Alexander the Great1.2 - 57
Hosea1.1 - 58
William Penn1.1 - 59
Lord Randolph Churchill1.1 - 60
Sulla1.1 - 61
Galen1.1 - 62
Charles Dickens1.1 - 63
Diocletian1.1 - 64
Henry Clay1.1 - 65
Hippocrates1.1 - 66
Benjamin Franklin1.1 - 67
Richard III1.1 - 68
Vespasian1.1 - 69
Henry James1.0 - 70
John Henry1.0 - 71
Osceola1.0 - 72
Oliver Cromwell1.00 - 73
John Bull0.99 - 74
Columba0.98 - 75
Plautus0.95 - 76
William the Conqueror0.93 - 77
Leigh Hunt0.93 - 78
Ahab0.93 - 79
Domitian0.93 - 80
Charles Lamb0.93 - 81
Irenaeus0.92 - 82
Sydney Smith0.90 - 83
John Wesley0.90 - 84
Joseph Smith0.89 - 85
Thomas Jefferson0.87 - 86
Samuel Adams0.87 - 87
Epicurus0.87 - 88
Marcus Aurelius0.86 - 89
Pocahontas0.85
- 90
Hesiod0.83 - 91
Horace Walpole0.80 - 92
Sennacherib0.80 - 93
John Morley0.79 - 94
Catiline0.79 - 95
John Quincy Adams0.78 - 96
Alcibiades0.78 - 97
Andrew Jackson0.77 - 98
John Stuart Mill0.76 - 99
Saladin0.76 - 100
Sappho0.75
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1880s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Vincent van Gogh12 decades - 2
Oscar Wilde14 decades - 3
Thomas Edison13 decades - 4
Alexander Graham Bell15 decades - 5
Arthur Rimbaud14 decades - 6
Antoni Gaudí5 decades - 7
Robert Louis Stevenson15 decades - 8
Guy de Maupassant14 decades - 9
Paul von Hindenburg10 decades - 10
Alexander III of Russia16 decades - 11
Paul Gauguin13 decades - 12
Bram Stoker12 decades - 13
Emperor Meiji11 decades - 14
Ivan Pavlov16 decades - 15
Cecil Rhodes12 decades - 16
Wilhelm Röntgen11 decades - 17
Pope Benedict XV11 decades - 18
José Martí16 decades - 19
Ludwig II of Bavarianot measured- - 20
Billy the Kid12 decades - 21
Henri Poincaré13 decades - 22
H. H. Asquith11 decades - 23
Ferdinand Foch7 decades - 24
Annie Besant15 decades - 25
George I of Greece0 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.