'That fall [Maud Montgomery] was enthralled by a book called "Zanoni", an occult love story written by an English nobleman named Edward Bulwer-Lytton. She read and re-read "Zanoni"... until she knew whole chunks of it by heart... She was so in love with its dark, masterful hero that she actually spent hours rewriting some of Lord Lytton's story so that the heroine's dialogue and behaviour would read more like dialogue and behaviour that would be hers if she were "Zanoni"'s heroine.'