The English Heiress (The Heiress Series: Book One)

The English Heiress is a historical romance by the American writer Roberta Gellis, published in 1980 by Dell. It is the first book of her Heiress series.

The novel takes place during and after the French Revolution, and its central figure is a young aristocrat who loses her family, her property and her position to the Terror and who survives by whatever means are available to her. Roger St. Eyre is an Englishman who goes to France to rescue her, and the arrangement he makes with her becomes the basis of the rest of the book. Gellis wrote historical romances in which the period is closely researched, and the politics of revolutionary France, the machinery of the Terror and the practical problem of getting a marked woman out of the country are all part of the plot rather than the scenery. The series continues with further novels about the women who inherit the same family's fortunes and difficulties.

Gellis had a background in medieval and Renaissance history and wrote both historical romance and historical fantasy, and her books are among the more carefully researched of the period's romance novels.