← 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 - 26
John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford2.4 - 27
Euclid2.4 - 28
John the Baptist2.4 - 29
Otho2.3 - 30
Trajan2.3 - 31
Bede2.3 - 32
Solon2.2 - 33
Euripides2.2 - 34
Thucydides2.1 - 35
Pythagoras2.1 - 36
Pindar2.0 - 37
Richard II1.9 - 38
Julius Caesar1.9 - 39
Sophocles1.9 - 40
John Smith1.8 - 41
Vespasian1.8 - 42
Aristophanes1.8 - 43
William Henry1.7 - 44
Ben Jonson1.7 - 45
Alexander the Great1.7 - 46
Hippocrates1.7 - 47
Alcibiades1.6 - 48
Ahab1.6 - 49
Isaac Newton1.6 - 50
John Bull1.6 - 51
Polybius1.5 - 52
Galen1.5 - 53
Hadrian1.5 - 54
Lucretius1.5 - 55
Lucan1.4 - 56
William Jones1.4 - 57
William the Conqueror1.4 - 58
Hesiod1.4 - 59
Adam Smith1.4 - 60
Oliver Cromwell1.4 - 61
Domitian1.4 - 62
John Adams1.3 - 63
Themistocles1.3 - 64
Suetonius1.3 - 65
William Penn1.2 - 66
Robert Walpole1.2 - 67
Hosea1.2 - 68
Epicurus1.2 - 69
Sallust1.2 - 70
Irenaeus1.2 - 71
Catiline1.1 - 72
Archimedes1.1 - 73
Rembrandt1.1 - 74
Plautus1.1 - 75
Richard III1.1 - 76
Thomas More1.1 - 77
Arrian1.1 - 78
Caligula1.1 - 79
Joshua Reynolds1.0 - 80
Diocletian1.0 - 81
Horace Walpole1.0 - 82
Saladin1.0 - 83
Edward the Confessor0.97 - 84
Sappho0.97 - 85
Walter Raleigh0.97 - 86
George Washington0.97 - 87
Anacreon0.97 - 88
Quintilian0.96 - 89
Columba0.95 - 90
Appian0.94 - 91
Phidias0.92 - 92
Warren Hastings0.90 - 93
Jehu0.90 - 94
Croesus0.87 - 95
Joseph Banks0.86 - 96
Belisarius0.86 - 97
Theocritus0.85 - 98
Catullus0.84 - 99
John Henry0.84 - 100
John Wesley0.83
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 19th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Abraham Lincoln22 decades - 2
Theodore Roosevelt16 decades - 3
Simón Bolívar21 decades - 4
Woodrow Wilson14 decades - 5
Otto von Bismarck16 decades - 6
Ulysses S. Grant16 decades - 7
James A. Garfield16 decades - 8
Andrew Jackson22 decades - 9
William McKinley16 decades - 10
Grover Cleveland14 decades - 11
John Quincy Adams22 decades - 12
Chester A. Arthur15 decades - 13
William Howard Taft12 decades - 14
William Henry Harrison22 decades - 15
Andrew Johnson22 decades - 16
James Buchanan22 decades - 17
Napoleon III21 decades - 18
Martin Van Buren21 decades - 19
John Tyler22 decades - 20
Zachary Taylor18 decades - 21
James K. Polk20 decades - 22
Rutherford B. Hayes16 decades - 23
Benjamin Harrison19 decades - 24
Millard Fillmore19 decades - 25
Franklin Pierce20 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.