Robert W. Service

Biography

Robert William Service (1874–1958) was a British-Canadian poet and novelist known as "the Bard of the Yukon" for his vivid, rollicking verse about the Klondike Gold Rush and life in the Canadian North. Born in Preston, Lancashire, England, Service emigrated to Canada in 1896 and worked for the Canadian Bank of Commerce, which sent him to Whitehorse and Dawson City in the Yukon Territory. There he absorbed the stories, characters, and landscapes that inspired his most famous poems. His first collection, Songs of a Sourdough (1907, also published as The Spell of the Yukon), containing "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee," was an immediate international sensation, selling millions of copies. Service’s verse is characterized by driving rhythms, vivid storytelling, dark humor, and an irresistible energy that made his poems among the most widely recited in the English language. He later lived in Paris, served as an ambulance driver in World War I, and continued writing poetry and novels until his death in France.