The review of the encyclopedic dictionary M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin and his contemporaries focuses on the relevance, the essential uniqueness and practical applicability of the publication. The dictionary, dedicated to the contemporaries of Saltykov-Shchedrin, is a philological event of great consequence. Any research of the writer’s oeuvre in the social, historical, political, and, by all means, literary contexts makes it possible to consider the author’s biography, his creative intentions and the particulars of their actualization in a consistent manner.