← 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
Jane Austen19 decades - 2
Queen Victorianot measured- - 3
Charles Dickens20 decades - 4
Charles Darwin21 decades - 5
Lord Byron22 decades - 6
Arthur Conan Doyle12 decades - 7
Mary Shelley16 decades - 8
Lewis Carroll16 decades - 9
George Bernard Shaw13 decades - 10
Emily Brontë14 decades - 11
Edward VII13 decades - 12
Charlotte Brontë17 decades - 13
Friedrich Engels17 decades - 14
Robert Louis Stevenson15 decades - 15
Michael Faraday20 decades - 16
George Eliot19 decades - 17
John Keats21 decades - 18
William Wordsworth22 decades - 19
James Clerk Maxwell14 decades - 20
John Stuart Mill18 decades - 21
Joseph Conrad14 decades - 22
Walter Scott22 decades - 23
David Lloyd George11 decades - 24
Charles Babbage20 decades - 25
Thomas Hardy18 decades - 26
Anne Brontë1 decades - 27
Cecil Rhodes12 decades - 28
John Ruskin18 decades - 29
J. M. W. Turner22 decades - 30
David Livingstone17 decades - 31
Alfred Tennyson19 decades - 32
Samuel Taylor Coleridge19 decades - 33
William Ewart Gladstone18 decades - 34
Thomas Carlyle20 decades - 35
J. M. Barrie13 decades - 36
Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powellnot measured- - 37
William Morris19 decades - 38
H. H. Asquith11 decades - 39
J. J. Thomson0 decades - 40
Emmeline Pankhurst7 decades - 41
Annie Besant15 decades - 42
John Dalton22 decades - 43
Robert Peel22 decades - 44
Edward Elgar13 decades - 45
Arthur Balfour15 decades - 46
Herbert Spencer17 decades - 47
Elizabeth Barrett Browning17 decades - 48
Robert Browning19 decades - 49
Thomas Robert Malthus8 decades - 50
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerstonnot measured- - 51
Henry Morton Stanley7 decades - 52
Alfred Russel Wallace15 decades - 53
Dante Gabriel Rossetti15 decades - 54
George Boole9 decades - 55
Victoria, Princess Royalnot measured- - 56
Isambard Kingdom Brunel2 decades - 57
Francis Galton17 decades - 58
Alfred North Whitehead10 decades - 59
Mary Anning5 decades - 60
Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisburynot measured- - 61
Richard Francis Burton2 decades - 62
Thomas Henry Huxley16 decades - 63
Joseph Merrick0 decades - 64
William IV of the United Kingdomnot measured- - 65
Joseph Lister18 decades - 66
Humphry Davy22 decades - 67
Charles Spurgeon6 decades - 68
Princess Alice of the United Kingdomnot measured- - 69
John Constable22 decades - 70
Robert Owen22 decades - 71
Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover0 decades - 72
George Stephenson22 decades - 73
George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedlestonnot measured- - 74
John Everett Millais13 decades - 75
Matthew Arnold17 decades - 76
Thomas Babington Macaulaynot measured- - 77
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearnnot measured- - 78
Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haignot measured- - 79
Charles George Gordon5 decades - 80
Eadweard Muybridge7 decades - 81
John Herschel0 decades - 82
John Franklin22 decades - 83
James Prescott Joule3 decades - 84
John Russell, 1st Earl Russellnot measured- - 85
Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gothanot measured- - 86
H. Rider Haggard14 decades - 87
Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdomnot measured- - 88
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondalenot measured- - 89
George Everest2 decades - 90
George MacDonald16 decades - 91
Richard Trevithick19 decades - 92
Jerome K. Jerome13 decades - 93
Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearnnot measured- - 94
Thomas Moore22 decades - 95
John Snow21 decades - 96
Aubrey Beardsley13 decades - 97
Henry Campbell-Bannerman11 decades - 98
Richard Owennot measured- - 99
Austen Chamberlain13 decades - 100
Edward Lear15 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.