John Kennedy Toole

Toole grew up in New Orleans under a domineering, musically ambitious mother, taught English at Tulane and a Puerto Rican college during a stint in the Army, and wrote A Confederacy of Dunces largely while stationed there, mailing pages home.

Simon and Schuster editor Robert Gottlieb rejected the manuscript repeatedly, calling it brilliant but going nowhere; the rejection, combined with depression and paranoia, contributed to Toole's suicide in 1969. His mother, Thelma, spent over a decade badgering publishers and writers, including Walker Percy, until Percy relented, read it, and championed it into print.

Published in 1980, it became a cult sensation and won the Pulitzer Prize the following year, a triumph Toole never lived to see.