← 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 Chinese books during the 19th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Zhu Xi870 - 2
Li Hongzhang149 - 3
Zhang Zhidong86 - 4
Zuo Zongtang43 - 5
Ban Gu40 - 6
Ge Hong40 - 7Chen Shou14
- 8
Mao Zedong12 - 9
Lu Xun11
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 19th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Jules Vallès16 decades - 2
Jules Guesde14 decades - 3
Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr19 decades - 4
Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire14 decades - 5
Édouard Drumont14 decades - 6
Victor Noirnot measured- - 7
Jean-Lambert Tallien0 decades - 8
Henri Rochefort17 decades - 9
Louis Charles Delescluzenot measured- - 10
Maurice Jolynot measured- - 11
Charles-Louis Havasnot measured- - 12
Félix Fénéon13 decades - 13
Marguerite Durand13 decades - 14
Maria Deraismes9 decades - 15
Louis Veuillotnot measured- - 16
François Mignet0 decades - 17
Prosper-Olivier Lissagaraynot measured- - 18
Jean Gravenot measured- - 19
Alfred Capus13 decades - 20
Conrad Malte-Brun4 decades - 21
Petrus Borelnot measured- - 22
Théophile Thoré-Bürgernot measured- - 23
Paul Alexisnot measured- - 24
Arsène Arnaud Claretie16 decades - 25
Anselme Bellegarriguenot 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.