Many authors have entire books written about them and their works.
For many significant authors, one or more books have been published that attempt to list all known criticism. They have titles such as William Faulkner: An Annotated Checklist of Criticism, or J.M. Synge: A Bibliography of Criticism. Healey Library has many of these books on the reference shelves on the 4th floor; their call numbers all begin with "P".
The main index for literature and language research. It indexes articles, books, book chapters, and dissertations.
American Antiquarian Society (AAS) collection documents the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction, to provide digital access to the most comprehensive collection of American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912. The collection includes 5 series by date and 50 subject subsets, which can be searched separately or together.
These are multi-volume print reference works. For each author, they include a biographical introduction, a list of principal works, sources for further study, as well as the full text or excerpts of critical essays. All of them can be found on the reference shelves on the 4th floor of Healey Library. Use the index in the last volume of each series to find a particular author.
The above sources are a good place to start, and often suffice to find good critical writing on an author or work. But if fail to find what you need in them, or want to find even more, there are plenty of other places to look.
Critical Survey of Poetry: English Language Series
by
The Explicator Cyclopedia
by