Robert W(illiam) Service (1874 - 1958)

• poet, novelist
• born 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England
• Scottish parents
• spent childhood in Scotland, educated at the University of Glasgow
• moved to Canada in 1894
• spent eight years in the Yukon working for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
• he arrived in the Klondike several years after the peak of the Gold Rush
• became an ambulance driver in France, and settled there in 1940
• returned to Canada during World War II
• spent the remainder of his life in France
• best known for his frontier ballads including The Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Law of the Yukon, and The Cremation of Sam McGee collected in Songs of a Sourdough (1907, later reissued as The Spell of the Yukon)
• other poetry:
  • Ballads of a Cheechako (1909)
  • Rhymes of a Rolling Stone (1912)
  • Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (1920)
  • Bar-Room Ballads (1940)
  • Rhymes of a Roughneck (1951)
  • Rhymes of a Rebel (1952)
  • Carols of a Codger (1954)
• novels include:
  • The Trail of '98 (1912) about the Klondike Gold Rush
  • Master of the Microbe (1926)
  • The House of Fear (1927)
• autobiographies:
  • Ploughman of the Moon (1945)
  • Harper of Heaven (1948)
• filmography
• more information

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