A thermosensitive image transfer ink sheet is composed of a support and a thermofusible coloring layer formed on the support, which contains a coloring agent, an epoxy resin, a mercapto-group-containing compound serving as an epoxy resin crosslinking agent, and a tertiary amine or a salt thereof serving as a crosslinking reaction promoting agent. A thermal image transfer recording material is composed of a thermosensitive image transfer ink sheet, and an image receiving sheet to which images are to be transferred from the thermosensitive image transfer ink sheet. This thermosensitive image transfer ink sheet is composed of a support and a thermofusible coloring layer formed on the support, with the thermofusible coloring layer containing a coloring agent and one or two components selected from the group consisting of the epoxy resin, the mercapto-group-containing compound, and the tertiary amine or the salt thereof, while one or two components selected from the group consisting of the epoxy resin, the mercapto-group-containing compound, and the tertiary amine or the salt thereof which are not contained in the thermofusible coloring layer are contained in a surface portion of the image receiving sheet.