'Darling' debut
Pasadena theater producer Gillian Bagwell looks to the past for her first novel
By Carl Kozlowski 12/30/2010
As the founder of the Pasadena Shakespeare Company, Gillian Bagwell devoted nearly a decade of her life to staging the finest plays of the Western world. Yet even when that 9-year effort ended in 2003, Bagwell found that her love for medieval times lived on.
Seven years later, Bagwell has re-emerged on the Pasadena scene, and the world at large, as the author of the historic fiction novel “The Darling Strumpet,” which takes readers into 17th-century England to follow the life of Nell Gwynn, one of the most famous courtesans of King Charles II.
Following Gwynn’s rise from an impoverished childhood to stardom in the exclusive King’s Company theatrical troupe, the story blends Gwynn’s saucy personality with romantic drama and an array of historical intrigue to create a richly layered and satisfying work.
Speaking by phone from her Pasadena home as she awaited an appearance Wednesday at Vroman’s Bookstore, Bagwell explains that the project began with a far different goal in mind.
“I started researching Nell Gywnn a long time ago with the idea of writing a one-woman show for myself, but realized it would be hard to do justice to her in such a short format,” says Bagwell. “I did acting and theater, so I never pursued a book. But in 2006 while living in London and taking care of my ill mother, I decided it was the right time to jump in.”
Bagwell garnered much of her background research by studying the famous diaries of Samuel Pepys, whose accounts provided the richest portrayal of London in those times. Fortunately, Pepys was a fan of the real-life Gwynn and recounted many of his conversation with her in his diaries, giving Bagwell some very direct connections to her protagonist.
“When I had the facts, I used them, and when I didn’t, I surmised what happened based on what I knew otherwise,” explains Bagwell. “A couple episodes are completely fictional. But a lot of major characters and a lot of minor ones were really figures in her world.”
Gillian Bagwell appears at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena. Call (626) 449-5320 or visit vromans.com.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT