← 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
Giuseppe Verdi18 decades - 2
Giacomo Puccini15 decades - 3
Niccolò Paganini18 decades - 4
Gioachino Rossini20 decades - 5
Vincenzo Bellini22 decades - 6
Gaetano Donizetti19 decades - 7
Pietro Mascagni13 decades - 8
Ruggero Leoncavallo13 decades
- 9
Cosima Wagner13 decades - 10
Maria Theresa of Naples and Sicilynot measured- - 11
Amilcare Ponchielli15 decades - 12
Karl Mozart0 decades - 13
Alessandro Moreschinot measured- - 14
Saverio Mercadante20 decades - 15
Alfredo Catalani13 decades - 16
Giuditta Pasta21 decades - 17
Francesco Paolo Tosti12 decades - 18
Giovanni Bottesini11 decades - 19
Giuseppina Strepponi15 decades - 20
Giovanni Pacini22 decades - 21
Alberto Franchettinot measured- - 22
Carlotta Grisinot measured- - 23
Luigi Denzanot measured- - 24
Mattia Battistininot measured- - 25
Cesare Pugninot 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.