Question: In what year was the writer of "Life's Little Ironies" born?

Context paragraphs:
Thomas Hardy: Thomas Hardy, OM (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet.  A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, especially William Wordsworth.  He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England.

Life's Little Ironies: Life's Little Ironies is a collection of tales written by Thomas Hardy, originally published in 1894, and republished with a slightly different collection of stories, for the Uniform Edition in 1927/8.

The Fiddler of the Reels: "The Fiddler of the Reels" is a short story by British writer Thomas Hardy.  It was first published in "Scribner's Magazine", volume 13 issue 4, April 1893.  It was included in "Life's Little Ironies", a collection of Thomas Hardy's short stories first published in 1894.

Sexless marriage: A sexless marriage is a marital union in which little or no sexual activity occurs between the two spouses.  The US National Health and Social Life Survey in 1994 (Laumann et al. 1994) found that 2% of the married respondents reported no sexual intimacy in the past year.  The definition of a non-sexual marriage is often broadened to include those where sexual intimacy occurs fewer than ten times per year, in which case 20 percent of the couples in the National Health and Social Life Survey would be in the category.  "Newsweek" magazine estimates that 15 to 20 percent of couples are in a sexless relationship.  Studies show that 10% or less of the married population below age 50 have not had sex in the past year.  In addition less than 20% report having sex a few times per year, or even monthly, under the age 40.

Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore: Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore is a collection of seventeen short stories by Singapore author Catherine Lim.  It was first published in 1978, in Singapore, by Heinemann under the Writing in Asia Series and earned for the writer much accolade.  It is Lim's first published book of fiction.  "Little Ironies" was later used as a set text for GCE 'N' Levels.  It is also the first collection of short stories to be written by a single author in Singapore.

Send In the Clowns: "Send in the Clowns" is a song written by Stephen Sondheim for the 1973 musical "A Little Night Music", an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's film "Smiles of a Summer Night".  It is a ballad from Act Two, in which the character Desirée reflects on the ironies and disappointments of her life.  Among other things, she looks back on an affair years earlier with the lawyer Fredrik.  Meeting him after so long, she finds that he is now in an unconsummated marriage with a much younger woman.  Desirée proposes marriage to rescue him from this situation, but he declines, citing his dedication to his bride.  Reacting to his rejection, Desirée sings this song.  The song is later reprised as a coda after Fredrik's young wife runs away with his son, and Fredrik is finally free to accept Desirée's offer.

Matt Dillon (Gunsmoke): Matt Dillon is a fictional character featured on both the radio and television versions of "Gunsmoke".  He serves as the U.S. Marshal of Dodge City, Kansas, who works to preserve law and order in the western frontier of the 1870s.  The character was created by writer John Meston, who envisioned him as a man "...whose hair is probably red, if he's got any left.  He'd be handsomer than he is if he had better manners but life and his enemies have left him looking a little beat up, and I suppose having seen his mother (back about 1840) trying to take a bath in a wooden washtub without fully undressing left his soul a little warped.  Anyway, there'd have to be something wrong with him or he wouldn't have hired on as a United States Marshal in the heyday of Dodge City, Kansas."  Notwithstanding Meston's original vision, the character evolved considerably during "Gunsmoke"' s nine-year run on CBS Radio and its 20-year run on CBS Television.

A Tragedy of Two Ambitions: "A Tragedy of Two Ambitions" is a short story by Thomas Hardy and was published in his collection "Life's Little Ironies" in 1894.

Johnson Zuze: Johnson Zuze (born 1985) is a visual artist living and working in Harare, Zimbabwe.  His work is based on creating startling forms from often cast away material found in his native Chitungwiza, highlighting aspects of a consumption based community and societal ironies that are the fabric of township life.  He is represented by KooVha Gallery.

Jonny Steinberg: Jonny Steinberg is a South African writer and scholar.  He is the author of several books about everyday life in the wake of South Africa’s transition to democracy.  Two of them, "Midlands" (2002), about the murder of a white South African farmer, and "The Number" (2004), a biography of a prison gangster, won South Africa’s premier non-fiction award, the "Sunday Times" Alan Paton Award.  In 2013, he was among the inaugural winners of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prizes, awarded by Yale University.  Steinberg’s books also include "Three-Letter Plague" ("Sizwe’s Test" in the United States), which chronicles a young man’s journey through South Africa’s AIDS pandemic.  It was a "Washington Post" Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Wellcome Trust Book Prize, among others.  Steinberg is also the author of "Thin Blue" (2008), an exploration of the unwritten rules of engagement between South African civilians and police, and "Little Liberia: An African Odyssey in New York" (2011), about the Liberian civil war and its aftermath in an exile community in New York and described as an "extraordinary, stylistically varied mix of reportage, history and biography".  Steinberg's 2015 book, "A Man of Good Hope", was described as "superb" by "Observer" reviewer Ian Birrell, who wrote: "On the surface, it is simply the biography of a lonely young migrant who dreams of a decent life, hardening his shell and hustling to survive in hostile human environments.  Yet it is really an epic African saga that chronicles some fundamental modern issues such as crime, human trafficking, migration, poverty and xenophobia, while giving glimpses into the Somali clan system, repression in Ethiopia and lethal racism in townships."

Supporting paragraphs: Life's Little Ironies Thomas Hardy
Answer: 1840