The way I see it, there's two parts to this question. One part is about thinking on a modern, industrial, great power war before WW1. The other part is about total war as a concept. But in short, yes

Altough the 19th century was largely a time of peace in Europe, there were a few wars around the place that held important lessons for military thinkers before 1914. Probably the most important of these for this discussion is Jan Bloch. Bloch was Polish and a banker by profession, but he was also a military thinker. His most important work was his six volume series "Future War and its Economic Consequences" which was sold in English as "Is War Now Impossible?".

Broadly, Bloch argued that the technological, economic and political advances of the last few decades had fudamentally changed war.

• New military technologies such as smokeless powder, bolt action and magazine fed rifles, machine guns and quick firing artillery had created a vast killing field in front of armies which would be impossible for troops to cross. Traditional methods of cavalry and infantry attack would be rendered obsolete and the new firepower would lead to entrenchment and stalemate.

• A war between modern, industrial nation states would mean armies numbering in the millions clashing along fronts hundreds of miles long, which along with the character of the fighting, would lead to a long, drawn out war. Decision in battle would not be forthcoming.

• Such a war would inevitably become a war of economies and states, where the entirety of the nation, society and the ecnomy was drawn into the conflict. Only when a nation collapsed under the strain would the war end.

Looking back after 1918, Bloch seems unnervingly prescient. He did do a good job of forseeing many of the characteristics that would define the First World War, even if he didn't predict the tank or military aircraft. But he wasn't the only person thinking about the future of war in 1900, and he was definitely in the minority of thinkers when it came to what the next war would look like. Bloch was largely dismissed by military professionals before 1914, particularly in Britain, and it was the more recent experiences of the Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War that preoccupied theorists.

Whilst the Russo-Japanese war in particular seemed to prove Bloch correct in many ways, such as small arms, machine guns, artillery and entrenchments, the conclusions he drew about their effect seemed wrong. Although the Russians were able to use these new military technologies against the Japanese, and created these vast killing zones, the Japanese prevailed. Strong discipline and high morale in the Japanese army were credited with overcoming superior firepower from the dispirited Russian troops. This seemed to confirm traditional ideas about the future direction of war for many militaries in Europe, most of which had sent observers to Manchuria. Many of these observers would turn up in very senior positions on both sides of the line in the First World War. Bloch's warnings were largely ignored, but he and many others were writing and discussing what modern war would be like before 1914.

Which brings us to total war. In military history when we refer to total war we have a set of specific ideas we put together when we say those words. It's generally seen as the entirety of a nation and its resources being directed towards a war effort. Everything, culture, politics, the economy, the media, is dominated by and in ideally, in some way working towards winning the war. This generally plays out by the state taking control of everything. Think the USSR in 1942. Every citizen (or subject) is a potential conscript either for the military or the economy. The state takes over control of industry to direct production, rationing is introducted to ensure the military effort is maintained, cultural production is directed towards supporting morale on the home front, life in general is militarised. On the military side of things, it also means that as everyone is contributing to the war effort, everyone is also a potential military target, strategic bombing in WW2 is sort of based on this idea.

The idea is old, with historians tracing thought back at least to the middle ages and many pointing to the Napoleonic wars as the first World War, but the terminology and modern usage is pretty new. The words first appear in 1935, in the memoirs of German general Erich von Ludendorf. But it's only after the Second World War that the phrase really takes off. There is though, plenty of discussion and dispute in the scholarship about 'total war' and how accurate or useful a term it actually is, how 'total' can a war ever be and that sort of thing. But by this point it's a pretty solid concept with a generally accepted meaning.