← 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
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe14 decades - 2
Voltaire22 decades - 3
William Blake22 decades - 4
Friedrich Schiller22 decades - 5
Mary Wollstonecraft21 decades - 6
Robert Burns22 decades - 7
Samuel Johnson22 decades - 8
Jonathan Swift22 decades - 9
Giacomo Casanova20 decades - 10
Olympe de Gouges22 decades - 11
Alexander Pope22 decades - 12
Guru Gobind Singh9 decades - 13
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing22 decades - 14
Edward Gibbon22 decades - 15
Baron Munchausen0 decades - 16
Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeaunot measured- - 17
Pierre Beaumarchaisnot measured- - 18
Marie Leszczyńska13 decades - 19
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffonnot measured- - 20
Carlo Goldoni22 decades - 21
Ahmed III3 decades - 22
Phillis Wheatley16 decades - 23
Henry Fielding22 decades - 24
Gavrila Derzhavin17 decades - 25
Horace Walpole22 decades - 26
Jean Paul22 decades - 27
Pierre de Marivaux22 decades - 28
Shah Alam II4 decades - 29
Oliver Goldsmith22 decades - 30
Antoine François Prévost12 decades - 31
Cao Xueqin10 decades - 32
Johann Joachim Winckelmann17 decades - 33
Ann Radcliffe13 decades - 34
Laurence Sterne22 decades - 35
Olaudah Equiano4 decades - 36
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos2 decades - 37
Noah Webster22 decades - 38
Denis Fonvizin9 decades - 39
Manon Roland10 decades - 40
James Boswell22 decades - 41
Alexander Radishchev16 decades - 42
William Cowper22 decades - 43
Joseph Addison22 decades - 44
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshirenot measured- - 45
Akbar II0 decades - 46
Lorenzo Da Ponte19 decades - 47
Christoph Martin Wieland22 decades - 48
Tsangyang Gyatsonot measured- - 49
Frances Burney13 decades - 50
André Chénier22 decades - 51
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock20 decades - 52
Samuel Richardson22 decades - 53
Yekaterina Dashkova1 decades - 54
Thomas Gray22 decades - 55
August von Kotzebue22 decades - 56
Uthman Dan Fodio0 decades - 57
Georg Forster22 decades - 58
Pietro Metastasio22 decades - 59
William Congreve1 decades - 60
Nicolaus Zinzendorf6 decades - 61
Charles Wesley22 decades - 62
John Burgoyne22 decades - 63
Charles François Dumouriez0 decades - 64
Adolph Freiherr Knigge1 decades - 65
Thomas Chatterton22 decades - 66
Matthias Claudius22 decades - 67
Jeanne Marie Leprince de Beaumontnot measured- - 68
Lizzie Velasquez0 decades - 69
Tobias Smollett22 decades - 70
Louis de Rouvroy, duc de Saint-Simonnot measured- - 71
Giuseppe Parini22 decades - 72
James Macpherson22 decades - 73
William Beckford22 decades - 74
Johann Kaspar Lavater17 decades - 75
Johann Peter Hebel16 decades - 76
John Gay22 decades - 77
Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierrenot measured- - 78
Nicolas-Edme Rétifnot measured- - 79
Ludvig Holberg2 decades - 80
Bernard Mandeville6 decades - 81
Jeanne de Valois-Saint-Rémynot measured- - 82
Kobayashi Issa0 decades - 83
Wilhelmine of Prussia, Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuthnot measured- - 84
Antoine de Rivarol3 decades - 85
Alexander Sumarokov19 decades - 86
Leandro Fernández de Moratín14 decades - 87
Gottfried August Bürger22 decades - 88
Christian Fürchtegott Gellert22 decades - 89
John Cleland15 decades - 90
Richard Steele22 decades - 91
Wolfgang von Kempelen3 decades - 92
Stéphanie Félicité Ducrest de Saint-Aubin de Genlis0 decades - 93
Johann Christoph Gottsched16 decades - 94
Jan Potocki4 decades - 95
Hannah More22 decades - 96
Alain-René Lesage2 decades - 97
Thomas Clarkson22 decades - 98
Charles-Joseph, 7th Prince of Ligne7 decades - 99
Carl Michael Bellman0 decades - 100
Salawat Yulayevnot measured-
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.