Edith Cummings, Jordan Baker, and the Golden Age of Golf in Fitzgerald’s Fiction

Name: Edith Cummings, Jordan Baker, and the Golden Age of Golf in Fitzgerald’s Fiction
Start: 2025-09-18T19:00:00-05:00
Location: 509 E. Deerpath, Lake Forest, IL, United States, Illinois 60045

Schedule

Thu, 18 Sep, 2025 at 07:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

509 E. Deerpath, Lake Forest, IL, United States, Illinois 60045 | Lake Forest, IL

Sue Hoover Epstein, independent scholar, is returning to the History Center on Thursday, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. to speak on the character of Jordan Baker in The Great Gatsby, who was based on Lake Forester Edith Cummings, winner of the U.S. Women's Amateur in 1923. Her talk will discuss how F. Scott Fitzgerald knew and admired Cummings and her brother Dexter (a Yale golf champion) and how he immortalized them both in his fiction.
The Cummings duo were lauded nationally for their golfing prowess, honed at The Onwentsia Club. Expect to hear many anecdotes from the Golden Age of Golf, and learn how Lake Forest was central to the development of the game. Epstein's research has focused on The Big Four, the Lake Forest debutantes who fascinated Fitzgerald and provided the model for many of his most memorable female characters. Edith Cummings, Ginevra King, Courtney Letts and Peg Carry loomed large on the Society Pages a century ago, and thanks to Fitzgerald, their exploits, personalities and marital choices defined a generation of modern women.