← 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
Rabindranath Tagore11 decades - 2
William Makepeace Thackeray17 decades - 3
Ghalib21 decades - 4
Bankim Chandra Chatterjee4 decades - 5
Savitribai Phule0 decades - 6
Dhondo Keshav Karve0 decades - 7
Kandukuri Vireshalingamnot measured- - 8
Gurajada Apparaonot measured- - 9
C.P.Brownnot measured- - 10
Samuel Vedanayagam Pillainot measured- - 11Salim aliinot measured-
- 12
Gopala Ballabha Dasnot measured- - 13
Dharmavaram Ramakrishnamacharyulunot measured- - 14
Vemuri Saradambanot 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.