Republication of: Black hole equilibrium states Part II. General theory of stationary black hole states

This is a reprinting of Part 2 of Brandon Carter’s lectures given at the 1972 Les Houches school on black holes, first published in a book of proceedings of that school in 1973, in which the author presents a general theory of stationary black holes. The paper has been selected by the Editors of General Relativity and Gravitation for re-publication in the Golden Oldies series of the journal. Several errors of the original text were corrected for this reprinting by the author. The reprinted article is accompanied by an editorial note written by Marek Abramowicz.