BOKENAM, OSBERN English author, was born, by his own account on Oct. 6, 1393. Dr. Horstmann suggests that he may have been a native of Bokeham, now Book ham, in Surrey, and derived his name from the place. In a con cluding note to his Lives of the Saints he is described as "a Suffolke man, frere Austyn of Stoke Clare." He travelled in Italy on at least two occasions, and in 1445 was a pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela. He wrote a series of legends of holy maidens and women. These are written chiefly in seven- and eight-lined stanzas, and nine of them are preceded by prologues. Bokenam was a follower of Chaucer and Lydgate, and doubtless had in mind Chaucer's Legend of Good Women. His chief, but by no means his only, source was the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, archbishop of Genoa, whom he cites as "Januence." The first of the legends, Vita Scae Margaretae, virginis et martinis, was written for his friend, Thomas Burgh, a Cambridge monk; others are dedicated to pious ladies who desired the history of their name-saints. The Arundel ms. 327 (British Museum) is a unique copy of Bokenam's work; it was finished, according to the concluding note, in 1447, and presented by the scribe, Thomas Burgh, to a convent unnamed "that the nuns may remember him and his sister, Dame Betrice Burgh." The poems were edited 5) for the Roxburghe Club with the title Lyvys of Seyntys . . . and by Dr. Carl Horstmann as Osbern Bokenams Legenden (Heilbronn, 1883), in E. Kolbing's Altengl. Bibliothek, vol. i.