← 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
Victor Hugo22 decades - 2
Alexandre Dumasnot measured- - 3
Jules Verne16 decades - 4
Émile Zola16 decades - 5
George Sand20 decades - 6
Honoré de Balzac17 decades - 7
Arthur Rimbaud14 decades - 8
Guy de Maupassant14 decades - 9
Charles Baudelaire17 decades - 10
Heinrich Heine21 decades - 11
Gustave Flaubert17 decades - 12
Stendhal22 decades - 13
Alexis de Tocqueville19 decades - 14
Paul Verlaine14 decades - 15
Alfred de Musset19 decades - 16
François-René de Chateaubriand11 decades - 17
Alexandre Dumas filsnot measured- - 18
Anatole France15 decades - 19
Germaine de Staël10 decades - 20
Alphonse de Lamartine20 decades - 21
Théophile Gautier19 decades - 22
Louise Michel15 decades - 23
Alphonse Daudet16 decades - 24
Prosper Mérimée19 decades - 25
Stéphane Mallarmé14 decades - 26
Pierre Loti14 decades - 27
Gérard de Nerval18 decades - 28
Ludwig I of Bavaria5 decades - 29
Frédéric Mistral17 decades - 30
Joris-Karl Huysmans11 decades - 31
Jules Michelet15 decades - 32
Octave Mirbeau14 decades - 33
Maurice Barrès14 decades - 34
François Guizot14 decades - 35
Maurice Leblanc14 decades - 36
Élisée Reclus16 decades - 37
Éliphas Lévi6 decades - 38
Hippolyte Taine13 decades - 39
Eugène François Vidocq0 decades - 40
Paul Lafargue15 decades - 41
Alfred de Vigny20 decades - 42
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly14 decades - 43
Sully Prudhomme16 decades - 44
Jules Renard13 decades - 45
Comte de Lautréamont8 decades - 46
Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuvenot measured- - 47
Eugène Sue20 decades - 48
Georges Feydeau14 decades - 49
Adelbert von Chamisso19 decades - 50
Flora Tristan13 decades - 51
Léon Bloy14 decades - 52
Jean-Henri Fabre7 decades - 53
Marie d'Agoult10 decades - 54
Alphonse Allais13 decades - 55
Juliette Récamier12 decades - 56
Charles Marie René Leconte de Lisle17 decades - 57
Paul Bourget15 decades - 58
Victorien Sardou16 decades - 59
Marceline Desbordes-Valmore13 decades - 60
Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adamnot measured- - 61
Edmond de Goncourt15 decades - 62
Hector Malot16 decades - 63
Théodore de Banville17 decades - 64
Charles Nodier22 decades - 65
Pierre-Jean de Béranger2 decades - 66
Robert de Montesquiou13 decades - 67
Remy de Gourmont13 decades - 68
François Coppée16 decades - 69
Henri de Régnier14 decades - 70
Edgar Quinet19 decades - 71
Eugène Labiche16 decades - 72
Tristan Corbière13 decades - 73
Jean Richepin14 decades - 74
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges0 decades - 75
Jules Laforgue14 decades - 76
Émile Gaboriau3 decades - 77
Eugène Scribe19 decades - 78
Rodolphe Töpffer6 decades - 79
Georges Courteline13 decades - 80
Edmond François Valentin About17 decades - 81
Zygmunt Krasiński0 decades - 82
Léo Taxil15 decades - 83
Sophie Rostopchine, Comtesse de Ségurnot measured- - 84
Michel Verne6 decades - 85
Aloysius Bertrand14 decades - 86
Henri Murger16 decades - 87
Paul Féval18 decades - 88
Charles Cros15 decades - 89
José-Maria de Heredia14 decades - 90
Armand Augustin Louis de Caulaincourtnot measured- - 91
Auguste Maquet18 decades - 92
Jules de Goncourt17 decades - 93
Ludovic Halévy16 decades - 94
Catulle Mendès16 decades - 95
Frédéric Ozanam17 decades - 96
Joséphin Peladan14 decades - 97
Jules Hetzel6 decades - 98
Charles Paul de Kock20 decades - 99
George du Maurier0 decades - 100
Louis Lucien Bonaparte6 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.