← Fame through time1900-1999
The 20th century
Whose names filled the books of the 20th 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 20th century, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus30 - 2
Aristotle7.1 - 3
Plato7.1 - 4
Homer7.1 - 5
Augustus4.9 - 6
Johns Hopkins4.4 - 7
Cicero4.0 - 8
George Washington3.8 - 9
Socrates3.4 - 10
Virgil3.3 - 11
Abraham Lincoln2.0 - 12
Euclid1.9 - 13
Thomas Jefferson1.6 - 14
Ovid1.6 - 15
Mark Twain1.5 - 16
Plutarch1.5 - 17
Cleopatra1.4 - 18
Theodore Roosevelt1.4 - 19
Woodrow Wilson1.4 - 20
William Henry1.3 - 21
Benjamin Franklin1.3 - 22
Herodotus1.3 - 23
Charlemagne1.3 - 24
Rembrandt1.3 - 25
Euripides1.2
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 20th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
J. R. R. Tolkien7 decades - 2
Agatha Christie10 decades - 3
George Orwell9 decades - 4
Virginia Woolf10 decades - 5
C. S. Lewis10 decades - 6
Salman Rushdie4 decades - 7
Rudyard Kipling13 decades - 8
Ian Fleming7 decades - 9
Neil Gaiman2 decades - 10
H. G. Wells16 decades - 11
Aldous Huxley10 decades - 12
Aleister Crowley7 decades - 13
Kazuo Ishiguro3 decades - 14
Arthur C. Clarke7 decades - 15
Terry Pratchett3 decades - 16
Christopher Hitchens4 decades - 17
Douglas Adams4 decades - 18
G. K. Chesterton12 decades - 19
Graham Greene9 decades - 20
Beatrix Potter10 decades - 21
John le Carré2 decades - 22
D. H. Lawrence11 decades - 23
Enid Blyton8 decades - 24
Tom Stoppard6 decades - 25
Sarah Ferguson4 decades - 26
W. Somerset Maugham0 decades - 27
Doris Lessing7 decades - 28
Dylan Thomas9 decades - 29
Alan Moore4 decades - 30
E. M. Forster10 decades - 31
A. A. Milne10 decades - 32
W. H. Auden9 decades - 33
William Golding7 decades - 34
Daphne du Maurier9 decades - 35
Harold Pinter6 decades - 36
Noël Coward5 decades - 37Alexander Litvinenko2 decades
- 38
Evelyn Waugh9 decades - 39
Philip Pullman2 decades - 40
Seamus Heaney5 decades - 41
Ian McEwan4 decades - 42
Alan Watts7 decades - 43
P. G. Wodehouse11 decades - 44
Ted Hughes6 decades - 45
Anthony Burgess6 decades - 46
Ken Follett4 decades - 47
Frederick Forsyth5 decades - 48
Clive Barker4 decades - 49
Robert Graves13 decades - 50Iris Murdoch7 decades
- 51
John Galsworthy12 decades - 52
David Irving6 decades - 53
Jeffrey Archernot measured- - 54
Julian Barnes4 decades - 55
J. G. Ballard5 decades - 56
Iain Banks0 decades - 57
Elias Canetti4 decades - 58
Arnold J. Toynbee11 decades - 59
Arthur Koestler8 decades - 60
Gertrude Bell10 decades - 61
Anna Freud9 decades - 62
Gerald Durrell5 decades - 63
Abdulrazak Gurnah0 decades - 64
Lee Childnot measured- - 65
Marty Feldmannot measured- - 66
Barbara Cartland5 decades - 67
Nigella Lawsonnot measured- - 68
Martin Amis4 decades - 69
Irvine Welsh3 decades - 70
Edith Cavell11 decades - 71
Mike Leighnot measured- - 72
Dorothy L. Sayers9 decades - 73
Edgar Wallace12 decades - 74Kingsley Amis7 decades
- 75
Niall Fergusonnot measured- - 76
P. D. Jamesnot measured- - 77
Paul Greengrassnot measured- - 78
Christopher Isherwoodnot measured- - 79
Michael Moorcocknot measured- - 80
Siegfried Sassoonnot measured- - 81
Noor Inayat Khannot measured- - 82
Steve Davisnot measured- - 83
Anthony Horowitznot measured- - 84
Robert Harrisnot measured- - 85
Vita Sackville-Westnot measured- - 86
Robert Fisk4 decades - 87
Bernard Lewisnot measured- - 88
Jackie Collinsnot measured- - 89
John Osbornenot measured- - 90
Ian Rankinnot measured- - 91
Ruth Rendellnot measured- - 92
J. B. Priestleynot measured- - 93Alistair MacLeannot measured-
- 94
Erika Mannnot measured- - 95
Viktor Suvorovnot measured- - 96
Helen Fieldingnot measured- - 97
Steven Knightnot measured- - 98
Sarah Kanenot measured- - 99
Jim Corbettnot measured- - 100
Emma Orczynot 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.