Definition of "outside of"

It never happens outside of the story-books that a baby so deserted finds home and friends at once.

1890, Jacob A[ugust] Riis, “Waifs of the City’s Slums”, in How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, page 188

'Don't think of what's past!' said she. 'I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what to-morrow has in store?'

1891, Thomas Hardy, chapter LVIII, in Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented […], volume III, London: James R[ipley] Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., […], phase the seventh (Fulfilment), page 260

Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose.

1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter V, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y., London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, pages 115–116

A book is a man’s best friend outside of a dog, and inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

1954, Jim Brewer, Boys' Life, volume 44, number 2, Think and Grin, page 78, column 1