Thanks - I see now the distinction you are drawing between CB's disruptions of illusion and JA's very different ones. I should read VW again, to see what she says about Austen's assertions that she's a novelist writing a novel. (Which I enjoy - from Sterne to ... Trollope? Thackeray, anyway. But de gustibus.)

I'll now go away and ponder on metatextuality and nineteeth-century novels generally, and whether it declined through the century. Thanks for the interesting post!