See Advent thread for 1855's:
Nordhoff x3
Twelve Years a Slave, Northrup
The Yarn of the Watch, (Ballou's) Farnsworth
Negro Minstrelsy – Ancient and Modern, (Putnam's)
Mountains and Molehills, Marryat



“…It is, even from the verge of the level, melancholy flat whereon we stand; a cheerful and enlivening picture, which ever and anon receives an additional animation from the blithe song of the sailors at windlass or capstan, or the ferry-boat or wherry bearing their lively burden to and fro across the waters of the benign river.”
[E.F.R., A Visit to Scott Russell's Dockyard, Colburn's United Service Magazine and Naval and Military Journal, pt.1, 1856]