← 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 English books during the 19th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus94 - 2
Homer15 - 3
Cicero13 - 4
Augustus13 - 5
Plato10 - 6
Virgil9.6 - 7
Aristotle9.4 - 8
Socrates6.4 - 9
Herodotus6.2 - 10
Plutarch5.6 - 11
Ovid4.2 - 12
Strabo4.1 - 13
Charlemagne3.9 - 14
Demosthenes3.8 - 15
Lord Byron3.6 - 16
Livy3.4 - 17
Origen3.1 - 18
Cleopatra3.0 - 19
Xenophon3.0 - 20
Walter Scott3.0 - 21
Tertullian2.7 - 22
James II, Count of Urgell2.6 - 23
Robert Peel2.6 - 24
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor2.6 - 25
Pericles2.5
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 19th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
David Lloyd George11 decades - 2
Cecil Rhodes12 decades - 3
William Ewart Gladstone18 decades - 4
H. H. Asquith11 decades - 5
Emmeline Pankhurst7 decades - 6Robert Peel22 decades
- 7
Arthur Balfour15 decades - 8
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerstonnot measured- - 9
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisburynot measured- - 10
Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover0 decades - 11
Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haignot measured- - 12
John Russell, 1st Earl Russellnot measured- - 13
Henry Campbell-Bannerman11 decades - 14
Austen Chamberlain13 decades - 15
Lord Randolph Churchill15 decades - 16
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Roseberynot measured- - 17
Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany0 decades - 18
Eleanor Marx8 decades - 19
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodonnot measured- - 20
Edmund Allenby, 1st Viscount Allenbynot measured- - 21
Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridgenot measured- - 22
John French, 1st Earl of Ypresnot measured- - 23
John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoenot measured- - 24
Keir Hardie13 decades - 25
Arthur Henderson12 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.