Today's OED antedating: "to come out of the woodwork"

To come out of the woodwork, figurative, to emerge from obscurity ("woodwork," sec 1 (d), first use cited 1973): Review titled "The Great Plague," by Robert C. Benchley, Life, December 8, 1921, p 18, col 1: "An appalling number of terrible little plays, looking as if they had just come out from the woodwork, scampered into town and took possession of most of the available theatres."