Robert W. (Robert William) Service

Born in Preston, England, in 1874, Robert W. Service was raised largely in Scotland before heading to Canada as a young man. After working in banking and traveling widely, he drew on the people, speech, and atmosphere of the Canadian North to create the narrative poems that made him widely popular.

He became especially associated with the Yukon and the Klondike Gold Rush era, earning the nickname "the Bard of the Yukon." Collections such as Songs of a Sourdough and Ballads of a Cheechako brought him a huge audience, and readers remembered him for his gift for turning rough frontier tales into fast-moving, memorable verse.

Service later lived for long periods in Europe and continued writing poetry, fiction, and memoir. He died in France in 1958, but his lively ballads and plainspoken storytelling have kept him a familiar name in popular poetry.