Yes, and the decade references go back rather quite a bit farther than the 1980s.

But the sixties were long, long ago, and we are living, not only in a time when the locomotive supplants the mule express, but in a new century, and in those changed conditions which time invariably brings around.

That's not referring to the 1960s, but the 1860s, and written in 1903.

Other examples; from 1929, referring to the 1880s and 1890s:

This Strange Adventure is the story of a woman's forty years, from the insipid '80s through the gay '90s, through the turmoil of two wars and the modern swift period of readjustment.

From 1912, referring to the 1870s:

In the seventies we were beginning an epoch of experiment and transition.

From 1906, referring to the 1850s:

She regularly read some standard educational paper or magazine; feeling that teaching was a science, one of the few in the Fifties, and therefore, like any other science demanded study.

From 1921, referring to the 1920s, since you're wondering about being self-referential:

I fancy we shall grow used to finding the twenties in each century momentous, and marked by great political and spiritual re-shapings of the world.

Unfortunately, I can't trace exactly when the "decade terminology" started coming up or why -- the earliest I've been able to find in various searches is the 1880s, although it looks like there wasn't any kind of regular use until the 1890s.

Coincidentally, the 1890s were the first decade to get a widely-used title, coined during the 1920s: "the gay 90s" (by the meaning of happy). Consider this 1940s songbook, Songs of the Gay 90's: a collection of the songs of yesterday including all the old time favorites. Including:

A bicycle built for two

California, here I come

The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo

Oh, my darling Clementine

Wait till the sun shines Nellie

The inventor of that term was likely the artist Richard Cutler, who later produced a book of the same title; the 1890s were a decade he depicted as more carefree.