← Fame through time1700-1799
The 18th century
Whose working lives fell in the 18th 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 18th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Voltaire22 decades - 2
Marie Antoinette22 decades - 3
Maximilien Robespierre14 decades - 4
Marquis de Sade12 decades - 5
Louis XVI of France22 decades - 6
Louis XV of France22 decades - 7
Charles X of France22 decades - 8
Montesquieu22 decades - 9
Antoine Lavoisier2 decades - 10
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgordnot measured- - 11
Joséphine de Beauharnais17 decades - 12
Philip V of Spain22 decades - 13
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayettenot measured- - 14
Olympe de Gouges22 decades - 15
Jean-Paul Marat19 decades - 16
Jeremy Bentham22 decades - 17
Jacques-Louis David7 decades - 18
Louis XVIII of France22 decades - 19
Denis Diderot21 decades - 20
Georges Danton0 decades - 21
Pierre-Simon Laplace2 decades - 22
Toussaint Louverture22 decades - 23
Madame de Pompadour22 decades - 24
Madame du Barry22 decades - 25
Joseph-Louis Lagrange0 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.