Poetry
Songs of a Sourdough
Robert W. Service · 1907
Synopsis
About thirty poems on the Yukon of the Gold Rush, two of whose ballads made its reputation. In one, a stranger whom no one recognises enters the Malamute, a saloon in the Klondike, at fifty degrees Fahrenheit below zero, sits down at the piano and plays before the drinkers. In the other, Sam McGee, a prospector from Tennessee who is always cold, makes his companion swear, on a Christmas Day on the Dawson trail, to cremate his remains; the narrator then drags the body on his sled, for days on end, towards Lake Laberge.
Context
Written in Whitehorse, where the author worked at a bank counter, before he was transferred to Dawson. He had enclosed a cheque to pay for the printing; the Methodist house of William Briggs, in Toronto, sent it back to him, offering ten per cent royalties, and printed the book fifteen times in 1907 alone. New York, Philadelphia and London followed the same year; in the United States, the collection took the title The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses.
Who it is for
Regular, rhymed verse, in a familiar language without difficulty, suited to reciting aloud.
Prizes and reception
Twenty-three printings as early as 1910, London taking up the numbering of the Toronto printings, and more than a million copies sold.
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