This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book argues that recent years have seen a proliferation in the diachronic analysis of narrative fiction. It uses a corpus-stylistic approach and investigates the alleged influence of Charles Dickens on the style of the Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdos. The book argues that information extraction from historical text is challenging because of the lack of data to train natural language processing tools. It evaluates the utility of in-domain training data for data-driven profiling of characters, verbs, and toponyms and reports a case study on a corpus of Chinese Buddhist text. The book aims at discussing the use of corpora in literary translation practice, teaching, and research in the frame of the emerging field of computer-assisted literary translation.