["Meet Me in St. Louis"] is a collection of frivolously pleasant fragments about the Smith family of St. Louis which adds up to a shrewd and accurate bit of not-too-early Americana….

In effective presentation of a bygone period the whole book seems greater than the sum of its dozen installments. Taken separately the parts were clever, humorous pieces of writing. Like many New Yorker pieces, they left the admiring reader with an embarrassed feeling of being up in the air and having missed the point—or wondering if there really was one. In this collection the cumulative effect is to build up a happy acquaintance with the whole Smith family and an enviable picture of their pleasant way of living—a considerable achievement. (p. 6)

Beatrice Sherman, "'Meet Me in St. Louis' and Other New Works of Fiction," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1942 by The New York...