John Kennedy Toole's mother got A Confederacy of Dunces published, then fought a bookseller and Toole's relatives over The Neon Bible until 1989

Toole died by suicide in 1969, leaving the manuscripts of A Confederacy of Dunces and The Neon Bible with his mother, Thelma. In 1976 she pressed the Confederacy manuscript on novelist Walker Percy, who recommended it to Louisiana State University Press. It appeared in 1980 in a run of 2,500 copies and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981. Under Louisiana inheritance law, paternal relatives held shared rights to Toole's works. They gave up their rights to Confederacy but, after the Pulitzer, refused to do so for The Neon Bible. Thelma would not allow publication if they earned from it. New Orleans bookseller Rhoda Faust sued her in Civil District Court for $250,000, claiming Thelma had orally promised her the right to publish it; Thelma died a week after the suit was filed, in 1984. Judge Gerald Fedoroff ruled against Faust and said an auction was the proper way to divide the co-owned book. Executor W. Kenneth Holditch, her heir to a half interest, allowed publication by Grove Press in May 1989 before any auction.