How Can We Truly Access the Words of the Author?

It's very rare to find the text of an author written in their own hand, what's called a holograph or an autograph. So you are always accessing that text through the mediating presence of the scribe. You are aware that the scribes are human with their own biases and prejudices who may alter the text as they see fit. To what degree can we truly access the words of the author? And that's kind of interesting and tricky when you're dealing with female authors... i'm desperately trying to kind of rescue them from the sort of the dust of history.