Scott came across the story of the brigand Francesco Moscato, known as "Il Bizarro" in the early nineteenth century, while he was travelling in Italy, trying to recoup his ruined health.

[1][2] The story that Scott heard, and jotted down in his journal, concerns a Calabrian bandit-leader, who is hard pressed by a French military force sent to capture him.

Scott finally goes back to mention one of Il Bizarro's former atrocities, in which he murdered a French officer by having him eaten by insects.

[3] Drawing on this narrative, and on some pamphlets dealing with Italian brigands,[2] Scott did his best to produce a publishable story, but his death later in the year left the manuscript of the still uncompleted Bizarro, and another novel called The Siege of Malta, in the hands of his son-in-law and literary executor J. G. Lockhart.

[4][5] Lockhart's poor opinion of both novels was shared by John Buchan, who in 1932 said he "hoped that no literary resurrectionist will ever be guilty of the crime of giving them to the world.