This Reprint of my Electrical Papers comes about by the union of a variety of reasons and circumstances. First, there was a demand for certain of my papers, especially for a set relating to Electromagnetic Waves. Although I distributed 49 copies in a collected form, I was asked for more, and also received assurances that a republication of my papers in general would be useful. But this demand was too small to lead to an immediate supply. Secondly, however, at the beginning of 1891 it was proposed to me by the publisher of The Electrician that my articles on Electro magnetic Theory, then commencing and now continuing in that journal, should be brought out later in book form. This was satis factory so far as it went, but it brought the question of a reprint of the earlier papers to a crisis. For, as the later work grows out of the earlier, it seemed an absurdity to leave the earlier work behind.