← 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
George Washington22 decades - 2
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart21 decades - 3
Thomas Jefferson22 decades - 4
Benjamin Franklin22 decades - 5
Johann Sebastian Bach22 decades - 6
Peter the Great21 decades - 7
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe14 decades - 8
Immanuel Kant22 decades - 9
John Adams22 decades - 10
Voltaire22 decades - 11
Catherine the Great22 decades - 12
Marie Antoinette22 decades - 13
James Cook22 decades - 14
Jean-Jacques Rousseau22 decades - 15
James Madison22 decades - 16
Maximilien Robespierre14 decades - 17
Francisco Goya18 decades - 18
Leonhard Euler22 decades - 19
Alexander Hamilton22 decades - 20
Adam Smith22 decades - 21
Carl Linnaeus7 decades - 22
William Blake22 decades - 23
Frederick the Great22 decades - 24
Antonio Vivaldi14 decades - 25
James Monroe22 decades - 26
Maria Theresa22 decades - 27
Paul I of Russia21 decades - 28
Anne, Queen of Great Britain0 decades - 29
Marquis de Sade12 decades - 30
George Frideric Handel21 decades - 31
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson22 decades - 32
Thomas Paine22 decades - 33
Louis XVI of France22 decades - 34
David Hume22 decades - 35
George II of Great Britainnot measured- - 36
Peter III of Russia21 decades - 37
Friedrich Schiller22 decades - 38
Mary Wollstonecraft21 decades - 39
Joseph Haydn22 decades - 40
Mikhail Lomonosov19 decades - 41
Louis XV of France22 decades - 42
Robert Burns22 decades - 43
Elizabeth of Russia20 decades - 44
Hokusai14 decades - 45
Charles X of France22 decades - 46
Alexander Suvorov18 decades - 47
Montesquieu22 decades - 48
Samuel Johnson22 decades - 49
Catherine I of Russia18 decades - 50
Antoine Lavoisier2 decades - 51
Jonathan Swift22 decades - 52
Aaron Burr22 decades - 53
Giacomo Casanova20 decades - 54
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgordnot measured- - 55
Edmund Burke22 decades - 56
Joséphine de Beauharnais17 decades - 57
Philip V of Spain22 decades - 58
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor22 decades - 59
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayettenot measured- - 60
Anna of Russia21 decades - 61
Peter II of Russia19 decades - 62
Charles III of Spain21 decades - 63
George III of the United Kingdom0 decades - 64
Olympe de Gouges22 decades - 65
Jean-Paul Marat19 decades - 66
Jeremy Bentham22 decades - 67
James Watt22 decades - 68
Jacques-Louis David7 decades - 69
Antonio Salieri15 decades - 70
Louis XVIII of France22 decades - 71
Blackbeard22 decades - 72
Denis Diderot21 decades - 73
Abigail Adams16 decades - 74
Qianlong Emperor3 decades - 75
William Pitt the Younger3 decades - 76
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor22 decades - 77
Nader Shah4 decades - 78
Alexander Pope22 decades - 79
Georges Danton0 decades - 80
John Wesley22 decades - 81
Charles XII of Sweden22 decades - 82
Martha Washington21 decades - 83
Mikhail Kutuzov8 decades - 84
Alessandro Volta22 decades - 85
Robert Walpole22 decades - 86
Pierre-Simon Laplace2 decades - 87
Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor6 decades - 88
Toussaint Louverture22 decades - 89
Edward Jenner22 decades - 90
Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperornot measured- - 91
Guru Gobind Singh9 decades - 92
Tipu Sultan15 decades - 93
Madame de Pompadour22 decades - 94
Samuel Adams22 decades - 95
Charles IV of Spain17 decades - 96
Grigory Potemkin16 decades - 97
Miguel Hidalgo Y Costilla21 decades - 98
William Herschel22 decades - 99
Pope Leo XII20 decades - 100
Emanuel Swedenborg0 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.