Title:
The Double Dealer
Date of Publication:
Jan. 1921 (1:1) – May 1926 (8:47)
Place of Publication:
New Orleans, Louisiana
Frequency of Publication:
Monthly (Jan. 1921 – May 1923)
Irregular (Nov. 1923 – May 1926)
Circulation:
Approx. 1500
Publisher:
The Double Dealer Publishing Company, New Orleans
Physical Description:
27 cm. No pictures. Approx. 40 pages. Contained poetry, short stories, reviews, and short plays.
Price:
25 cents
Editor(s):
Julius Weis Friend
Associate Editor(s):
Albert Goldstein, John McClure, Basil Thompson
Libraries with Original Issues:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; University of Virginia; Library of Virginia; University of Alabama; Tulane University; University of Mississippi; Columbia University; University of New Orleans
Reprint Editions:
New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1966
When The Double Dealer was first published in New Orleans in January, 1921, its editors hoped it would become the “National Magazine of the South.” Their call for Southern literature extended into their second year of publication, but even in the first year the magazine seemed more interested in publishing good writing, regardless of its source. By 1922 the magazine’s regional identity fell by the wayside, and The Double Dealer lived up to its editor’s professed goals: “[The Double Dealer] is entering upon its career with no policy whatever but that of printing the very best material it can procure, regardless of popular appeal, moral or immoral stigmata, conventional or unconventional technique, new theme or old” (Hoffman 192).
The editors took pride in publishing aspiring poets and novelists, including Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Jean Toomer, and Thornton Wilder, all of whom first published in The Double Dealer in 1922. Although their publications were not always as polished as some of the other contemporary little magazines, The Double Dealer stood out for its ability to pinpoint and publish talent that would take other magazines years to notice. The Double Dealer shut its doors in May 1926, when its editors decided they could no longer dedicate the sufficient amount of time to it (Chielens).
William Congreve’s play The Double-Dealer begins with an epigraph borrowed from Terence’s Heauton Timorumenos: “To this plan I give the palm. Here I might extol myself as one who has such strength, and the power of such great cunning, that I can deceive them both by speaking the truth.” The editors of The Double Dealer demonstrated the extent to which this play influenced their little magazine, starting each issue of the magazine with “…I can deceive them both by speaking the truth” beneath the title.
Julius Weis Friend (1894 – 1962)
Editor: July 1921 – May 1926
New Orleans native Julius Weis Friend spent sixteen months in France fighting in World War I before returning home to begin a literary career. Inspired by the Modernist movement, Friend began playing with experimental writing. He founded and edited The Double Dealer in 1921, but by 1926 he decided to focus on his own essays and reviews, and he ceased publication of the magazine. He continued to contribute his prose to various periodicals (Hoffman 11).
Maxwell Bodenheim
“Dress-Model”
“Village-Clerk”
Anton Chekhov
“The Bastard”
Hart Crane
Translation of Laforgue’s “Locutions des Pierrots”
Donald Davidson
“Corymba”
“Bryad”
H. D.
“At Eleusis”
“Centaur Song”
William Faulkner
“Portrait”
“Swinburne”
Ernest Hemingway
“A Divine Gesture”
“Ultimately”
Alfred Kreymborg
“Paris Letter”
Jean Toomer
“Nora”
Robert Penn Warren
“Portraits of Three Ladies”
Thornton Wilder
“Sentences”
Chielens, Edward E., ed. American Literary Magazines: The Twentieth Century. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992.
The Double Dealer. 1921 – 1926. New York, N.Y: Kraus Reprint Corporation, 1966.
Hoffman, Frederick J., Charles Allen, and Carolyn F. Ulrich. The Little Magazine: A History and a Bibliography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1947.
Image, cover May 1922. “Ernest Hemingway In His Time: Appearing in Little Magazines.” 18 Nov. 2003. University of Delaware Library. 24 Sept. 2008.
Image, cover June 1922. John B. Weaver. “Hemingway and the Magazines.” 12 Oct. 2004. University of South Carolina Libraries. 24 Sept. 2008.
“The Double Dealer” compiled by Christine Highet (Class of ’09, Davidson College)