It really depends on what you mean by "literal." Are you speaking of the modern, fundamentalist Protestant understanding of the term? Then no, but ancient and medieval exegetes certainly recognized a "literal" sense of Scripture and understand large portions of the Bible to be historical (of course, this can be misleading as their understanding of history is also not the same as ours).
In general, pre-modern Biblical interpretation was far more fluid than how we understand it today, and it tended to prize allegorical reads above the literal. Thus, it was less important to discern what Genesis taught us about history, and far more important to understand what it taught us about Christ and the salvation of man. The stories in the text were the sort of "intro-level" to this deeper level of understanding.
Alongside this is the notion that Scripture contains within itself an infinitude of meaning, "like the colors of a peacock's tail" to quote a 9th century theologian (John Scottus Eriugena). This goes for every little bit of Scripture. So, for example, I'm currently translating a 12th century Biblical commentary on the Psalms and the author describes how the whole of salvation history, the plan of the Psalms themselves, the path to salvation for the individual man, a discourse on the body of Christ, and the nature of man can be discerned in the six verses of the first Psalm:
Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence. But his will is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he shall meditate day and night.
And he shall be like a tree which is planted near the running waters, which shall bring forth its fruit, in due season. And his leaf shall not fall off: and all whatsoever he shall do shall prosper. Not so the wicked, not so: but like the dust, which the wind driveth from the face of the earth.
Therefore the wicked shall not rise again in judgment: nor sinners in the council of the just.
For the Lord knoweth the way of the just: and the way of the wicked shall perish.
Takes quite a bit of digging around to get all those meanings out of such a short passage.
With all this in mind, there's a considerable allowance for alternative interpretations, as long as it doesn't contradict the core truths of the faith (what these are is constantly being argued over and worked out in various arenas). You can see an example of this in the later books of the Confessions, where Augustine says alternative interpretations of Genesis are perfectly fine, and indeed he himself offers another interpretation in On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis. Here he concludes that the six days of Creation are instantaneous and the "days" represent periods of angelic knowledge, giving you a clue to how flexible "literal" interpretation could be for these thinkers.
This is all considerably different then the modern understanding where there's an opposition set (although never rigidly maintained) between literal and allegorical readings and literal is understood as meaning something like "absolutely historical." That sort of understanding only emerges in the late-19th/early 20th century, it's quite recent and very much a product of that period's philosophy/theology.
A good source on the early interpretation of the Bible is Frances Young's The Bible and the Formation of Christian Culture
You can split this question into two different ones. First, where did today's creationists come from? Second, did they draw upon some original tradition of literalism? The answers would then be "Seventh-Day Adventists," and, "kinda."
The indispensable source for this question is Ronald Numbers' excellent work, The Creationists, which follows the anti-evolution movement from its, ahem, genesis contemporary with Darwin.
Though Numbers' account starts in the 1800s, he characterizes modern "creationism," which holds that the literal text of Genesis supervenes any contrary empirical discoveries, as a new movement, growing largely out of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. So while "literalism" is not new, the insistence that the literal reading of Genesis trumps science was new.
As to Augustine, discussed by others here, this is a complicated matter, and should be understood in the context of his De Doctrina Christiana. In that book, Augustine explains his approach to reading the Bible, and appears to endorse, though not in as many words, the idea that the Bible should be read as part of a quest for capital-T Truth rather than as a quest for facts like you might find in an encyclopedia. Towards that end, the believer should bring to bear all of his interpretive faculties, and not rely on the word alone, when reading scripture. (This, at least, is my interpretation.)
Presumably using this rubric, Augustine expresses doubt about the literal value of some parts of the creation story, but accepts others, in his The Literal Interpretation of Genesis. Other church fathers felt similarly, Origen among them. Check out Section 16 of this link:
And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally.
Putting this all together, it might be fair to say that the evangelical notion that ALL of the Bible is to be taken literally for all things, and that it should be read as both textbook and moral guide, is "relatively" "new."
So already, you said that Augustine was literal. Note that that's literalism for a specific thing. I'd caution against seeing literalism as an all-or-nothing thing. Augustine specifically doesn't seem to believe in a literal 7-day creation. And Augustine is one guy.
The issue with this question is that the literal/non-literal dichotomy is a recent creation. Ancient people presumably seen the narrative as true in a historical sense, with the people being real and events actually happening.
However, they wouldn't've seen the text as necessarily meaning what a plain reading would suggest. There's ample evidence of ancient commentators thinking that the days of creation weren't 24 hours long, for instance. That sort of thing is really necessary for making sense of the sometimes contradictory text of the bible.
Answered my own question.
Augustine [...] accepted the literalism of the creation of Adam and Eve, and explicitly accepted the literalism of the virginity of Jesus's mother Mary.
De Sacra Virginitate, 6,6, 18, 191. via