Death Be Not Proud

Death Be Not Proud is a title that has been used by several writers.

The title, Death, Be Not Proud, originates with a sonnet by the English poet John Donne, whose opening line reads "Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so." The poem argues that "Death" (personified) should take no pride in what it does, as it is ultimately powerless to prevent the resurrection of all humanity. The sonnet is often collected in anthologies of "great poems".

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Death Be Not Proud is also the title of a memoir by John Gunther in which he records the true story of his teenage son's struggle to overcome a brain tumor, and his ultimate death at the age of seventeen. The book, written in the late 1940s, records in simple detail all the events and tensions that made up the months that Johnny Gunther fought for his life and his parents sought to help him through recourse to every medical possibility then known. Partly because of its stark honesty about the pain that this kind of struggle causes a family, and partly because of its refreshingly revealing portrait of a brilliant young man (his ideas about physics were advanced enough to gain commendation by Albert Einstein) struck down too young by incurable illness, Death Be Not Proud became a best-selling book that is still popular today. The story in the book was eventually made into a TV movie in 1975.