William Godsoe MacFarlane (December 28, 1870 – February 14, 1942) was a Toronto-based publisher of postcards, maps, and souvenir viewbooks. He was raised in Saint John, New Brunswick and began his career with the St. John Sun newspaper. He published works about the local area before pursuing a university education at Acadia University, Columbia, and Harvard. In 1899 or 1900, he began working for Grip, Ltd., occasionally publishing under his own name. In 1905, he bought out the firm and changed its name to W. G. MacFarlane (also often as Wm. G. MacFarlane). In 1907, the company incorporated as The MacFarlane Company with operations in both Canada and the U.S., but it soon fell into financial difficulties and was forced to file for bankruptcy the following year. He appears to have spent much of the following years in the United States working for various publishers before founding a new publishing operation in Toronto in 1938.