heldon Goldfarb has a PhD in English from the University of British Columbia, where he specialized in the works of William Makepeace Thackeray. He published an edition of Thackeray’s first novel Catherine in 1999 with University of Michigan Press, and it was reissued in updated and electronic form with COVE in 2022.
In recent years he has turned his attention to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, producing a study of the Sherlock Holmes stories (for MX Press) in 2019 and becoming president of the Vancouver Sherlock Holmes Society in 2023. He is currently working on an edition of Conan Doyle’s non-fiction book on reading (Through the Magic Door) for Edinburgh University Press. Based on this work, he produced a lecture in 2025 for the annual Worldwide Doyle series, called "Conan Doyle, Misquoter," a celebration of Doyle’s flair for altering anecdotes and quotations.
He has also written a play called "The Ghost of Conan Doyle," in which Conan Doyle explains himself, and a neo-Victorian murder mystery called Remember, Remember, which was nominated for a Canadian crime writing award in 2005.
Other writings include articles on Edward FitzGerald and Harrison Ainsworth for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, an essay on Oliver Cromwell for a book on English radicals, and articles on a host of other Victorian figures from Thomas Babington Macaulay to Emily Brontë.
Dr. Goldfarb currently works as the archivist for the student society at the University of British Columbia, and has written a history of the University’s students called The Hundred-Year Trek. He enjoys regaling the members of Student Council with amusing tidbits from the University’s history and will soon be conducting tours of an historical exhibit celebrating a century of the University at its current location. Perhaps his greatest achievement was appearing in the pages of People magazine for writing a puckish letter to the Times Literary Supplement about the strange appearance of three late-twentieth century American presidents in Arnold Bennett’s 1910 novel Clayhanger.
Created 8 October 2025