The article deals with the representation of literary characters’ pronunciation in books by modern Russian, British, American (USA), Australian and Spanish writers. It shows how the author’s comments, as well as alternative spellings and other visual means of registering segmental and prosodic features of speech are used to point to a foreign accent, a regional or social dialect, or individual pronunciation patterns, etc. Frequencies of the use of the literary tool in Russian, English and Spanish literatures are presented. The conclusion emphasizes the sociolinguistic validity of book characters’ phonetic portraying and the adequate picture of the sociolinguistic situation in the country drawn with its help.