The following is academic writing.In this case study, I compare the salient semantic features found in the contexts of the word melancholy in a diachronic corpus of fiction from 1722 to 1834. By building such a corpus, I aim to document and explain a change in the usage and meaning of melancholy. I intend to use corpus linguistics to provide empirical evidence of a semantic change of the emotion word melancholy from the pre-Romantic period to the Romantic period.