Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar (23 June 1901 – 24 January 1962) was a Turkish poet, novelist, literary scholar and essayist, widely regarded as one of the most important representatives of modernism in Turkish literature. In addition to his literary and academic career, Tanpınar was also a member of the Turkish Parliament between 1944 and 1946. Early life and education Tanpınar was born in Istanbul on 23 June 1901, the youngest of three children. His father, Hüseyin Fikri Efendi, was a judge. Hüseyin Fikri Efendi was of Georgian origin, his family having roots in the city of Maçahel. Tanpınar's mother, Nesime Bahriye Hanım, died of typhus in Mosul in 1915, when Tanpınar was thirteen. Because his father's vocation required frequent relocation, Tanpınar continued his education in several different cities, including Istanbul, Sinop, Siirt, Kirkuk, and Antalya. After quitting veterinary college, he resumed his educational career at the Faculty of Literature at Istanbul University, which he completed in 1923.. During his time at the university, Tanpınar was tutored by Yahya Kemal, whose views deeply influenced the pupil's intellectual development and ideas about aesthetics, literature, Turkish history and culture. Between the years 1921 and 1923, Tanpınar published 11 poems in the literary publication Dergâh, which was founded by Yahya Kemal. He graduated from Istanbul University in 1923 after defending his thesis on Şeyhî's Hüsrev ü Şirin, a widely influential 15th-century masnavi frequently recomposed by various poets in subsequent periods, sometimes with the title Ferhad ü Şirin. Later life and work After graduating, Tanpınar began to teach. Throughout his educational career, he taught at high schools in Erzurum (1923–24), Konya, Ankara, Istanbul, the Educational Institute of Gazi and the Fine Arts Academy. At the Fine Arts Academy, besides teaching literature, Tanpınar lectured on branches of aesthetics in arts, history of art and mythology (1932–39). As an educator, he provoked debate and a degree of controversy in the 1930s after arguing for the elimination of pre-Tanzimat literature from national school curricula. In 1939, despite not having obtained a doctorate, Tanpınar was appointed to the newly founded chair of 19th-Century Turkish Literature, as professor of New Turkish Literature, at the Istanbul University Literature Faculty by the minister of education, Hasan Âli Yücel, and was tasked with writing a history of post-Tanzimat Turkish Literature. He published this study as XIX. Asır Türk Edebiyatı Tarihi in 1949. He also contributed several publications, including Yedigün. The 1940s marked a period