Career
Miss Lou appeared in her first Jamaican pantomime in 1943, playing opposite the late Ranny Williams. The two were to become a much-loved duo in Jamaican theatre.
Her first book date from the early '40s was devoted to poetry -- including Humorous Verses in Jamaican Dialect -- and she was a resident artist in 1945-1946 with the "Caribbean Carnival."
After World War II, her writing started to get wider distribution, and she began performing and lecturing about Jamaican culture and Jamaican music, in her homeland and subsequently in England and the United States, and her activities were further enhanced when she began recording for Folkways Records in the early '50s.
Bennett was also featured on a show on the BBC and later had a program running for five years on station ZQI in Kingston. In later years her writing was more involved with poetry than music, although she kept her hand in the latter well into the 1970s and is one of the very few performing artists in the world who has recorded for both Folkways Records and Island Records.
Louise Bennett taught drama at the University of the West Indies Extra Mural Department and also at some other agencies.
The Independence Anthology of Jamaican Literature published in 1962 had a poem of hers which was placed alongside an Anancy story under the Miscellaneous section.
Jamaica Labrish which was released in 1966 was an instant best-seller and the book had its second impression in 1972.