BOSA  , a seaport and episcopal see on the W.

coast of Sardinia, in the province of Cagliari, 30 M . W. of Macomer by rail . Pop . (1901) 6846 . The height above the town is crowned by a castle of the Malaspina family . The cathedral, founded in the 12th century, restored in the 15th, and rebuilt in 1806, is fine . There are some tanneries, and the fishing industry is important, but the coral production of Sicily has entirely destroyed that of Bosa since 1887 . The district produces oil and wine . The present town of Bosa was founded in 1112 by the Malaspina, 12 m. from the site of the ancient town (Bosa or Callnedia), where a well-preserved church still exists . The old town is of Roman origin, but is only mentioned by Pliny and Ptolemy, and as a station on the coast-road in the Itineraries (Corp . Inscr . Lat. x .

7939 seq.) . One of the

inscriptions preserved in the old cathedral records the erection of four silver statues, of Antoninus Pius, his wife Faustina and their two sons . BOSBOOM-TOUSSAINT, ANNA LOUISA GEERTRUIDA (1812-1886), Dutch novelist, was born at Alkmaar in north Holland on the 16th of September 1812 . Her father, named Toussaint, a local chemist of Huguenot descent, gave her a fair education, and at an early period of her career she developed a taste for historical research, fostered, perhaps, by a forced indoor life, the result of weak health . In 1851 she married the Dutch painter, Johannes Bosboom (1817—1891), and thereafter was known as Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint . Her first romance, Almagro, appeared in 1837, followed by the Graaf van Devonshire (The Earl of Devonshire) in 1838; the Engelschen to Rome (The English at Rome) in 1840, and Het Huis Lauernesse (The House of Lauernesse) in 1841, an episode of the Reformation, translated into many European languages . These stories, mainly founded upon some of the most interesting epochs of Dutch history, betrayed a remarkable grasp of facts and situations, combined with an undoubted mastery over her mother tongue, though her style is sometimes involved, and not always faultless . Ten years (1840—1850) were mainly devoted to further studies, the result of which was revealed in 1851-1854, when her Leycester in Nederland (3 vols.), Vrouwen van het Leycestersche Tyd perk (Women of Leicester's Epoch, 3 vols.), and Gideon Florensz (3 vols.) appeared, a series dealing with Robert Dudley's adventures in the Low Countries . After 1870 Mrs Bosboom-Toussaint abandoned historical romance for the modern society novel, but her Delftsche Wonderdokter (The Necromancer of Delft, 1871, 3 vols.) and Majoor Frans (1875, 3 vols.) did not command the success of her earlier works . Major Frank has been translated into English (1885) . She died at the Hague on the 13th of April 1886 . Her novels have been published there in a collected edition (1885—1888, 25 vols.) .