Clift has now been honoured with a blue plaque at the entrance to Kiama Library under a Heritage NSW program that honours the people and events that have helped shape the state.

Clift was born in Kiama in 1923 and her affinity with words emerged at a young age when she began composing poems, including one at the age of eight about the Kiama Blowhole.

In 1941 she moved to Sydney and embarked on her journalism career, later working for the Argus in Melbourne, where she met and fell in love with the famous (and married) war correspondent George Johnston.

Their affair led to them both leaving the Argus and moving to London for four years, before they moved to the Greek islands of first Kalymnos and then Hydra.

It was in Greece that Clift wrote the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus and published her first novel, Walk to the Paradise Gardens, which was inspired by the landscape of Kiama.

Clift returned to Australia in 1964 and wrote a column for the Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne's The Herald.

She died by suicide in 1969, but it was just this month that her autobiographical and unfinished novel about her childhood in Kiama, The End of the Morning, was published.

Clift's plaque was unveiled by Kiama Historical Society and Labor spokesperson for Kiama, MLC Dr Sarah Kaine, on Saturday, April 13.

The society's president Sue Eggins said the organisation nominated Clift for a blue plaque because she was "the best essayist in Australia".

"Her work on issues such as feminism, First Nations people and migrants are still relevant today," Ms Eggins said.

Dr Kaine described Clift as a "woman before her time".

"What she would do is write about 'sneaky little revolutions'... Her essays very much covered progressive issues and progressive politics and issues of social justice," Dr Kaine said.

"Well before multiculturalism was an accepted tenant of NSW, she was very pro-multiculturalism, she worked for the 1967 referendum to recognise Aboriginal [people] as well, and she was very much a proponent of the rights of women."

Clift's niece Diana Bradshaw said the blue plaque was a "lovely honour" for her aunt, for whom writing was a "gift and passion".

Dr Kaine said the addition of the plaque to Kiama would demonstrate the cultural depth of the town and how its people, like Clift, were very connected to their local community but "understand their place and their role in advocating for a better world altogether".

Kiama Library was chosen to host the blue plaque as it holds a full collection of Clift's works and neither of the houses she lived in in Kiama are protected by heritage listing.