The Heart of Princess Osra is an 1896 novel and is part of Anthony Hope's trilogy of books which spawned the genre of Ruritanian romance.

This collection of linked short stories is a prequel: it was written immediately after the success of The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) and was published in 1896, but is set in the 1730s, well over a century before the events of the first novel and its sequel, Rupert of Hentzau (1898).

The stories are set in the fictional country of Ruritania, a Germanic kingdom, and deal with the love life of Princess Osra of the House of Elphberg.

Her name, the feminine form of "Osric," is not an invention, but it is sufficiently unusual to suggest that the character is herself extraordinary, separated from life’s routine.

A man meets Princess Osra, and immediately develops a consuming romantic passion for this extraordinary woman.