Robert William Service, known as "the Bard of the Yukon," was a British-Canadian poet and author who lived from January 16, 1874, to September 11, 1958. William was given as a middle name in memory of a wealthy uncle. The middle name was deleted by Service after his uncle failed to provide provisions for him in his will. He was a bank clerk by trade, having been born in Lancashire of Scottish origin, but he also spent a lot of time traveling, frequently in extreme poverty, across the west of the United States and Canada. When his bank sent him to the Yukon, he was moved by stories of the Klondike Gold Rush and inspired to write two poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee," which displayed a remarkable level of authenticity for a writer without any prior experience with gold mining and quickly gained popularity. Encouraged by this, he rapidly produced further songs on the same subject, which were later collected in Songs of a Sourdough (known in the United States as The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses) and sold in large quantities. When his subsequent collection Ballads of a Cheechako achieved the same level of success, Service was able to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle based in Paris and the French Riviera while traveling frequently.
