Short answers, pulled from the story.
Mir Taqi Mir was an 18th-century Urdu poet born in Agra in 1723 who is considered one of the pioneers who shaped the Urdu language itself. He was a principal poet of the Delhi School of the Urdu ghazal and created a poetic register called Rekhta by balancing native Hindustani with Persian diction. His complete works, Kulliyat-e-Mir, contain 13,585 couplets across six diwans.
Mir Taqi Mir was born in Agra, India, then called Akbarabad and ruled by the Mughals, in August or February 1723. His grandfather had originally migrated from Hejaz to Hyderabad and then to Akbarabad.
Mir Taqi Mir died on the 21st of September 1810 in Lucknow from an overdose of a purgative. He was buried in Lucknow, though the original grave marker is believed to have been removed when railway tracks were built over the site. A cenotaph was erected in the 1970s near the actual burial place with help from Maqbool Ahmed Lari, founder of the Mir Academy in Lucknow.
Mir Taqi Mir's autobiography is called Zikr-e-Mir, written in Persian. It covers the period from his childhood to the beginning of his time in Lucknow, though scholars note it is undated in places and conceals as much as it reveals.
Mirza Ghalib acknowledged through his own couplets that Mir Taqi Mir was a genius who deserved respect. His contemporary Zauq also expressed belief in Mir's greatness through his poetry.
Mir Taqi Mir's major works include Kulliyat-e-Mir, a collection of Urdu poetry in six diwans totalling 13,585 couplets; Zikr-e-Mir, his Persian-language autobiography; Nikat-us-Shura, a biographical dictionary of Urdu poets written in Persian; Faiz-e-Mir, five stories about Sufis and faqirs; and Kulliyat-e-Farsi, a collection of his Persian poems. His masnavi Mu'amlat-e-Ishq is considered one of the greatest love poems in Urdu literature.