The Secret Power: A Romance of the Present Marie Corelli

London, Methuen, 1921. First Edition. First Impression. Hardback. A very good copy. A convoluted sf romance. "[featuring] an advanced airship with a new power source [the essence of life], which the heroine Morgana Royal flies to the Sahara Desert, where she discovers a super-scientific lost race hiding inside a city protected by a force field; in the meantime, her rejected (and significantly dejected) lover has created the atomic bomb, an invention which he intends to use to enforce world peace (a plot evolution typical of the Scientific Romance); but the bombs are complicatedly detonated in error near Los Angeles, though their inventor remains alive but brain-damaged due to Royal's application of a curative radioactive drug. Royal then returns to the city, where she will help conquer the future." [Clute, SFE]. Uncommon in the jacket. The jacket has a little loss to the top of the spine, and a little toning and edge wear elsewhere. 20mm tear to the jacket at the lower spine. Spine slightly toned, with a reading lean. Some bumping to the spine tips and corners. A little foxing to the edges, and some offsetting to the first few leaves. 8pp of ads to the rear, roughly opened. [12737, Hyraxia Books].