Robert William Service (1874–1958) was a British-Canadian poet and writer, often called "the Bard of the Yukon." Born in Preston, Lancashire, England, Service emigrated to Canada as a young man and worked for the Canadian Bank of Commerce, which posted him to the Yukon Territory during the tail end of the Klondike Gold Rush.
His first collection, Songs of a Sourdough (1907), which included "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee," was an immediate bestseller. Service's vivid, rollicking narrative poems about life in the frozen North captured the public imagination and made him one of the best-selling poets of the twentieth century.
Though critics sometimes dismissed his work as populist verse rather than serious poetry, Service's ballads have never gone out of print. "The Cremation of Sam McGee" remains one of the most memorized and recited poems in the English-speaking world, beloved for its dark humor, driving rhythm, and unforgettable Yukon setting.
