The article provides an survey of the most significant memoirs by Mikhail Lermontov’s contemporaries, referring to different periods of his life and creative work. Memories or statements of contemporaries, containing an appraisal of the poet’s personality or his works are embedded into historical and literary context which allows to estimate their credibility. A considerable attention is paid to those episodes of Lermontov’s biography, that received controversial interpretation of both his contemporaries and later generations of scholars (for example, factual sources of V.A.Sollogub’s short story «Great world»; the events that brought to Lermontov’s duel with N.S.Martynov and a few others). The most prominent published works on Lermontov’s life and his creation work from the second half of the XIX century until recently are considered in the article.