Death Be Not Proud is a memoir by American author John Gunther, taking its name from Holy Sonnet 10 by John Donne.

In the book, 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, published in 1949, 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, starring Robby Benson as Johnny Gunther, and Arthur Hill as John Gunther.

Publication data

• John Gunther, Death Be Not Proud (1949). Harper Perennial edition 1998: ISBN 0060929898

See also

• List of notable brain tumor patients

External links

• Full text of Donne's poem, from bartleby.com
• IMdB listing for Death Be Not Proud (1975)
• Death be not proud, though some have called thee

English poems | 1949 books