Robert Service was born in Preston, raised in Scotland, but emigrated to Canada at the age of 22. He then settled in France before the First World War. His Songs of a Sourdough (1907) celebrating the Yukon Gold Rush was a publishing phenomenon, selling three million copies by 1940. It included the popular poems 'the shooting of Dan McGrew' and 'The Cremation of Sam McGee'. He considered himself a versifier rather than a poet, and published many more books of verse, as well as several novels.