A Confederacy Of Dunces

About the author

John Kennedy Toole

John Kennedy Toole was born in New Orleans in 1937. He received a master's degree in English from Columbia University and taught at Hunter College and at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He wrote A Confederacy of Dunces in the early sixties and tried unsuccessfully to get the novel published; depressed, at least in part by his failure to place the book, he committed suicide in 1969. It wa s only through the tenacity of his mother that her son's book was eventually published and found the audience it deserved.