← Fame through time1800-1899
The 19th century
Whose names filled the books of the 19th century - 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 German books during the 19th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Maria Theresa3.8 - 2
Jean Paul1.8 - 3
Paracelsus1.4 - 4
Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor1.3 - 5
Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor1.3 - 6
Gustav Adolph, Duke of Mecklenburg-Güstrow1.2 - 7
Hans Sachs0.99 - 8
William IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel0.85 - 9
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor0.85 - 10
Charles Augustus, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach0.84 - 11
George Frederick of Waldeck-Eisenberg0.84 - 12Władysław of Głogów0.78
- 13
Martin Luther0.78 - 14
Novalis0.77 - 15
Louis Philip, Count Palatine of Simmern-Kaiserslautern0.75 - 16
Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor0.72 - 17
Frederick Charles, Duke of Württemberg-Winnental0.71 - 18
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor0.65 - 19
Albrecht Dürer0.64 - 20
Frederick William IV of Prussia0.59 - 21
Conradin0.58 - 22
Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg0.55 - 23
Catherine the Great0.55 - 24
Richard Wagner0.55 - 25
Francis Anthony, Count of Hohenzollern-Haigerloch0.53
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 19th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Abraham Lincoln22 decades - 2
Theodore Roosevelt16 decades - 3
Edgar Allan Poe17 decades - 4
Mark Twain16 decades - 5
Thomas Edison13 decades - 6
Woodrow Wilson14 decades - 7
Ulysses S. Grant16 decades - 8
James A. Garfield16 decades - 9
Andrew Jackson22 decades - 10
Henry Ford16 decades - 11
William McKinley16 decades - 12
Grover Cleveland14 decades - 13
John Quincy Adams22 decades - 14
Chester A. Arthur15 decades - 15
William Howard Taft12 decades - 16
William Henry Harrison22 decades - 17
Andrew Johnson22 decades - 18
James Buchanan22 decades - 19
Alexander Graham Bell15 decades - 20
Martin Van Buren21 decades - 21
John Tyler22 decades - 22
Zachary Taylor18 decades - 23
James K. Polk20 decades - 24
Rutherford B. Hayes16 decades - 25
Emily Dickinson13 decades - 26
Benjamin Harrison19 decades - 27
Henry David Thoreau13 decades - 28
Millard Fillmore19 decades - 29
Franklin Pierce20 decades - 30
Walt Whitman17 decades - 31
Ralph Waldo Emerson19 decades - 32
Joseph Smith22 decades - 33
John D. Rockefeller14 decades - 34
Harriet Tubman9 decades - 35
Andrew Carnegie14 decades - 36
Robert E. Lee16 decades - 37
Herman Melville18 decades - 38
Frederick Douglass18 decades - 39
P. T. Barnum17 decades - 40
Sitting Bull15 decades - 41
Jefferson Davis20 decades - 42
Louisa May Alcott14 decades - 43
Nathaniel Hawthorne19 decades - 44
J. P. Morgan16 decades - 45
Henry James18 decades - 46
William Jamesnot measured- - 47
John Dewey14 decades
- 48
Susan B. Anthony16 decades - 49
Harriet Beecher Stowe17 decades - 50
Billy the Kid12 decades - 51
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow18 decades - 52
Geronimonot measured- - 53
Washington Irving22 decades - 54
John Brownnot measured- - 55
Edith Wharton13 decades - 56
L. Frank Baum8 decades - 57
William Tecumseh Sherman14 decades - 58
Helena Blavatsky2 decades - 59
John C. Calhoun22 decades - 60
John Wilkes Booth16 decades - 61
Sojourner Truth13 decades - 62
George Washington Carver9 decades - 63
O. Henry14 decades - 64
Ambrose Bierce13 decades - 65
Brigham Young19 decades - 66
George Armstrong Custer7 decades - 67
Liliʻuokalaninot measured- - 68
Nellie Bly13 decades - 69
Booker T. Washington13 decades - 70
Crazy Horse15 decades - 71
Samuel Morse0 decades - 72
William Randolph Hearst12 decades - 73
Jesse James14 decades - 74
Stonewall Jackson16 decades - 75
John Singer Sargent11 decades - 76
James Fenimore Cooper18 decades - 77
Mary Todd Lincoln10 decades - 78
John J. Pershing12 decades - 79
Sam Houston20 decades - 80
Jane Addams14 decades - 81
John Muir19 decades - 82
Mary Cassatt12 decades - 83
Davy Crockett19 decades - 84
Buffalo Bill15 decades - 85
Joseph Pulitzer14 decades - 86
Cornelius Vanderbilt18 decades - 87
Levi Strauss11 decades - 88
William H. Seward19 decades - 89
Sacagawea9 decades - 90
Kamehameha I13 decades - 91
Elizabeth Cady Stanton15 decades - 92
William Jennings Bryan13 decades - 93
Ellen G. White6 decades - 94
John James Audubon19 decades - 95
Tecumsehnot measured- - 96
Hannibal Hamlin18 decades - 97
Frances Hodgson Burnett15 decades - 98
Wyatt Earp10 decades - 99
Charles Sanders Peirce9 decades - 100
Henry George19 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.