Background

He was born on January 16, 1874 in Preston, Lancashire, England, United Kingdom, the son of Robert Service, a Scottish bank teller, and of Emily Parker, daughter of an owner of cotton mills. When Service was six, the family moved to Glasgow, Scotland.

Education

He graduated from Hillhead High School. He attended a few university classes but left after a row with a professor.

Career

He became an apprentice in the Commercial Bank of Scotland. Finding banking too dull and confining, and having had his wanderlust roused by voracious reading, Service traveled to Canada on a tramp freighter in 1895 and made his way to British Columbia. Shortly thereafter his traveling brought him to Los Angeles, Calif. , then a rough, young, brawling town. For the next several years Service wandered up and down the Pacific coast of the United States. To sustain his vagabond life-style he worked at various times as a logger, dishwasher, teacher, bank clerk, ranch hand, fruit picker, and even as a gardener for a bordello in San Diego.

Returning to Canada in 1901, Service took a steady position in Victoria, as a teller with the Canadian Bank of Commerce. The bank transferred him to Kamloops, then to Whitehorse and Dawson in the Yukon Territory. After two years in Dawson, Service resigned his position but remained for seven years doing free-lance writing.

Service's first book of verse was published (1907) in New York as The Spell of the Yukon and in Toronto as Songs of a Sourdough. Containing his two most popular poems, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee, " the book was a sensational success.

A sequel, Ballads of a Cheechako (1909), was nearly as successful; "sourdough" and "cheechako" became popular household words for "prospector" and "newcomer. " Two more books appeared while Service remained in the Yukon: The Trail of '98 (1910), an unsuccessful novel, and Rhymes of a Rolling Stone (1912), another success that returned to the vibrant mode of his first book. In 1912, Service left the Yukon for good.

After a brief stint as a correspondent reporting the war in the Balkans for the Toronto Star, he settled in France in 1913. Despite his lengthy residence in France, his Canadian exploits, and the popular vision of him as an American rhymer, Service remained a British citizen throughout his life.

During World War I he served as an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross, and later as an officer with an intelligence unit of the Canadian army. His Red Cross exploits resulted in a highly popular book of verses, Rhymes of a Red Cross Man (1916). But Service's later literary efforts failed to achieve much success. Nevertheless, he continued to write until his death.

He wrote a health book, Why Not Grow Young? (1928), and two very anecdotal autobiographies, Ploughman of the Moon (1945) and Harper of Heaven (1948). None of these captured the popular fancy.

After spending World War II in Hollywood, California, Service returned to France, where he published books of verse.

He died at his home in Lancieux.

Achievements

• For at least twenty years Robert William Service was clearly the most popular poet in the Americas. He chronicled the Yukon and Klondike gold rushes in hearty rhymes that captured the rough frontier, often was called "the Bard of the Yukon". He is best known for his poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", from his first book, Songs of a Sourdough. Service has also been noted for his use of ethnonyms that would normally be considered offensive "slurs", but with no insult apparently intended. Words used in Service's poetry include jerries (Germans), dago (Italian), pickaninny (in reference to a Mozambican infant), cheechako (newcomer to the Yukon and Alaska gold fields, usually from the U. S. ), nigger (black person), squaw (Aboriginal woman), and Jap (Japanese). Robert W. Service has been honoured with schools named for him including Service High School in Anchorage, Alaska. He was also honoured on a Canadian postage stamp in 1976. The Robert Service Way, a main road in Whitehorse, is named after him.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Ballads of a Cheechako

    (This reproduction was printed from a digital file created...)

  • Rhymes of a Red cross man

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The spell of the Yukon : and other verses

    (This book was originally published prior to 1923, and rep...)

  • The Trail of '98: A Northland Romance

    (HardPress Classic Books Series)

  • Spell of the Yukon & Other Verses 1ST Edition

    (hardcover no dust jacket. well read binding- binding is s...)

Views

Quotations: "Verse, not poetry, is what I was after . .. something the man in the street would take notice of and the sweet old lady would paste in her album; something the schoolboy would spout and the fellow in the pub would quote. Yet I never wrote to please anyone but myself; it just happened. I belonged to the simple folks whom I liked to please. "

Connections

In 1913 he married Germaine Bourgoin, a well-to-do Parisian; they had one daughter.

Father:

Robert Service

Mother:

Emily Parker

Spouse:

Germaine Bourgoin

child:

Iris Service

References

• Vagabond of Verse: A Biography
• Robert W. Service: A Bibliography