Wú Jǐngzǐ 吳敬梓 (1701–1754), courtesy name Mǐnxuān 敏軒, also known as Lìmín 粒民 and by the studio name Wénmù Shānfáng 文木山房, was a native of Quánjiāo 全椒 in Ānhuī province. CBDB records his dates as 1701–1754 (id 65474), fully consistent with standard biographical sources.
He came from a prominent local gentry family in decline: his grandfather had been a jìnshì 進士, but by his own generation the family fortune was largely dissipated. He himself never succeeded in the examination system beyond a low-level qualification, and he deliberately refused patronage that might have led to official employment. Around 1733 he moved to Nanjing, where he spent the rest of his life in relative poverty among literary friends, supported partly by the proceeds of selling family land and partly by the generosity of patrons. He declined an imperial recommendation for the bóxué hóngyuān 博學鴻源 special examination in 1736.
His major work is Rúlín Wàishǐ 儒林外史 (The Scholars; KR4k0212), the greatest satirical novel of the Qīng dynasty, composed ca. 1740–50 and first published 1768–79 in a 55-chapter edition. The novel draws heavily on his observations of examination culture, literary pretension, and social hypocrisy in Jiangnan scholarly circles. He also composed poetry and prose essays collected in Wénmù Shānfáng jí 文木山房集.