Margins
Special Service book cover
Special Service
The Best Poems
2009
First Published
4.41
Average Rating
161
Number of Pages

Includes 82 classic poems by the "Bard of the Yukon." Robert William Service was a poet and writer, sometimes referred to as "the Bard of the Yukon". He is best-known for his writings on the Canadian North, including the poems "The Shooting of Dan McGrew", "The Law of the Yukon", and "The Cremation of Sam McGee", all of which are included in this collection of 82 poems. Contains the poems from the following Songs of a Sourdough, and The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses

Avg Rating
4.41
Number of Ratings
107
5 STARS
56%
4 STARS
31%
3 STARS
12%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
1%
goodreads

Author

Robert W Service
Robert W Service
Author · 20 books

This author is the the British-Canadian writer of Yukon poetry. For the British historian of modern Russia, see Robert Service. Robert William Service was born into a Scottish family while they were living in Preston, England. He was schooled in Scotland, attending Hillhead High School in Glasgow. He moved to Canada at the age of 21 when he gave up his job working in a Glasgow bank, and traveled to Vancouver Island, British Columbia with his Buffalo Bill outfit and dreams of becoming a cowboy. He drifted around western North America, taking and quitting a series of jobs. Hired by the Canadian Bank of Commerce, he worked in a number of its branches before being posted to the branch in Whitehorse (not Dawson) in the Yukon Territory in 1904, six years after the Klondike Gold Rush. Inspired by the vast beauty of the Yukon wilderness, Service began writing poetry about the things he saw. Conversations with locals led him to write about things he hadn't seen, many of which hadn't actually happened, as well. He did not set foot in Dawson City until 1908, arriving in the Klondike ten years after the Gold Rush, but his renown as a writer was already established. For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert\_W.\_Service.

548 Market St PMB 65688, San Francisco California 94104-5401 USA
© 2026 Paratext Inc. All rights reserved