Uncle Robin: Thanks for the history of "selfless" etc -- I guess I misunderstood Kowal's article, and she avoided those words not because they were anachronistic, but because she made a choice to write in a language similar to Austen's.
Inspired by this thread, I have just finished re-reading KJ Charles' "Band Sinister", a homage to Heyer's "Venetia". She has an author's note about a historical error she has made consciously: There's a minor plot point about a main character trying to establish domestic sugar production in Britain, using homegrown sugar beet. While this was done in continental Europe at the time the book was set, in reality this didn't happen in Britain until the 1920s.
This is a kind of anachronism I don't mind
