The Mixture as Before is a collection of 10 short stories by the British writer W. Somerset Maugham, first published by William Heinemann in 1940.

[1] In the foreword, Maugham writes, "When my last volume of short stories was published The Times headed their review of it with the title The Mixture as Before.

On Capri, the narrator meets Thomas Wilson, who tells his story: He was formerly a bank manager in England, and fell in love with the island while on holiday.

The narrator, returning many years later, learns that Wilson, after putting off the act until he could not get credit, eventually made an attempt to kill himself which affected his mental state; he is living in reduced circumstances and avoids people, "like a hunted animal".

Captain Robert Forestier and his American wife Eleanor, who met during the First World War in France when he was wounded and she was a nurse, live on the French Riviera.

Lord Mountdrago, Secretary for Foreign Affairs in the government, sees Dr. Audlin, a psycho-analyst in Wimpole Street, London.

He describes dreams which prevent him from working, in which he humiliates himself in the presence of Owen Griffiths, a Labour MP from Wales.

Audlin later learns that Mountdrago has died by seemingly falling onto railway lines at a tube station, and that Grffiths has been found dead.

Louis Remire is a former policeman serving a sentence, for murdering his wife, in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, a penal colony in French Guiana.

They murdered his predecessor, deceived by a seduction; Remire, no longer interested in women, and protected by his two dogs, feels safe.

Nicky Garnet, aged eighteen, is a promising tennis-player; before he goes to Monte Carlo for a tournament, his father, a London stockbroker, tells him not to gamble, not to lend anyone money, and to avoid women.