# Fame.am profile — machine-readable export
# Canonical URL: https://fame.am/person/thelma-toole
# Generated: 2026-08-21T00:36:12.518Z

schema: https://schema.org/Person
url: "https://fame.am/person/thelma-toole"
name: "Thelma Toole"
slug: "thelma-toole"
description: "John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. At 16 in 1954, he wrote his first novel, The Neon Bible, which he shelved in the same year, not finding a willing publisher; he later dismissed it as \"adolescent\". Toole was a successful and popular professor, first at University of Southwestern Louisiana, then Hunter College, and finally St. Mary's Dominican College in New Orleans. Having persuaded Simon & Schuster \nto accept A Confederacy of Dunces, he was unable to resolve editorial disputes. Due in part to the novel's failure, he suffered from paranoia and depression, dying by suicide at the age of 31."
tagline: "Mother of novelist John Kennedy Toole (1901-1984)"
image: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/91/1954_Yearbook_photo_of_John_Kennedy_Toole.jpg/330px-1954_Yearbook_photo_of_John_Kennedy_Toole.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail"
gender: "female"
country:
  name: "United States"
  isoCode: "US"
birthDate: "1901-09-03"
deathDate: "1984-08-17"
livingStatus: "DECEASED"
scores:
  popularity:           28.62
  momentum:             6.153846153846154
  historical:           1.534089333333333
  currentAttention:     0
  sourceConfidence:     9.999999999999998
  profileCompleteness:  44
  trendDirection:       "RISING"
ranks:
  global:   null
  country:  null
  category: null
sources:
  - url: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelma_Toole"
    title: "Thelma Toole"
    type:  "WIKIPEDIA"
  - url: "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q88569491"
    title: "Wikidata"
    type:  "WIKIDATA"

# bio (long form, separated for readability)
bio: |
  Imported from discovery source: wikidata-relations