The magazine's title came from a William Congreve play of the same name that Thompson and Friend admired for its acute dissection of human nature.

[2] Loyola University New Orleans preserves the personal papers of Basil Thompson which contain correspondence, manuscripts, and other materials related to the Double Dealer.

[3] With its subtitle A National Magazine for the South, The Double Dealer positioned itself to combat a popular stereotype of Southern literature as a provincial and second-rate "Sahara of the Bozart," as H.L.

[4] In pursuit of its inclusive vision, The Double Dealer published African-American authors, and an unusually high proportion of its writers were women.

[5] Described as "an incubator of local literary culture and a conduit of Modernism,"[4] it featured work by a who's who of American writers, including William Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Amy Lowell, Ernest Hemingway, Djuna Barnes, Carl Van Vechten, Babette Deutsch, Thornton Wilder, Hart Crane, and others.