Reddit mentions of Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction (New Accents)

Looking at the early usages of an idea is always an interesting way to first approach that term. You get to see how the idea, in this case metafiction, was first handled in literature and how that idea developed as it was used by different writers in different periods all with different cultural / literary agendas.

So, here are a couple of early examples of metafictional literature:

• The Canterbury Tales: the narrative frame constantly, by its nature, alludes to itself as a piece of writing. The speakers frequently mention how they are telling a tale and why they are telling that tale.
  
• Don Quixote: the hero of the novel reads so many novels he decided to try and enact those novels. There are many scenes where the speaker would alert the reader to the fact they are also reading one such novel.
  
• Shakespeare: There are quite a few moments in Shakespeare where a character addresses the audience and reminds them that they are watching a play. Some of the best examples are the play-within-a-play moments, such as in Hamlet. These are moments where the play meditates on what it means to be acting or watching a play. We might better call this technique metatheatre.
  
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman: If you say pre-postmodernist metafiction this is the novel that most people will think of. It is metafictional is every single sense of the word. Constantly referring back to its own writing process, layering of narratives, etc etc.
  
• Melville's The Confidence Man. This short story discusses how literary techniques are used in earlier chapters.
  
  Then we have postmodernism itself, the literary period that this term is synonymous with. The reason why it is much more important as a critical term here, even though it was being used earlier, is that metafiction for the postmoderns comes to be used as way of interrogating one's philosophical relationship with the world. It is much, much more than the playful layering of narrative that is usually was prior to postmodernism. It came to be for the postmoderns a meditation about how we know something, how we are able to read and write and what the point of those activites are. It was also used to dislodge the idea that there existed some kind of absolute and universal truth. Reality was a construct, a discourse and metafiction highlighted this better than most other techniques.
  
  So, some of the big names in postmodern metafiction:
  
  
• Anything by John Barth
  
• John Fowles
  
• The People of Paper
  
• House of Leaves
  
• Flann O'Brien (not really postmodern, on the cusp of postmodernism)
  
• Brecht (same as above)
  
• Pale Fire
  
• Mumbo Jumbo
  
• Crying of Lot 49
  
  EDIT: Just re-read your question and see that you are more interested in a history of the term and not so much its literary manifestations. Start with an etymological dictionary. This one is very good: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Oxford-Dictionary-English-Etymology/dp/0198611129/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369152716&sr=8-1&keywords=etymology+dictionary.
  
  There are also a couple of very good books that look at metafiction and that also go into the term's history. For example
  
  
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Metafiction-Practice-Self-Conscious-Fiction-Accents/dp/0415030064/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369152738&sr=1-1&keywords=metafiction
  
  
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Metafiction-Longman-Critical-Readers-Currie/dp/0582212928/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369152738&sr=1-3&keywords=metafiction