Newspaper articles from the time of publication often have interviews with authors, criticism or book/poetry reviews. Look for books that collect reviews and interviews from the author's time period.
Search full text and images 1851-2020 including news, illustrations, editorials, and advertisements.
Online archive of eBooks and complete backruns of scholarly journals in a variety of academic fields.
T. S. Eliot: The Contemporary Reviews by 
James Joyce: A Critical Guide by 
By-line: Ernest Hemingway: Selected Articles and Dispatches of Four Decades by Interviews with Robert Frost by Emily Dickinson's Home: The Early Years as Revealed in Family Correspondence and Reminiscences by