TORONTO -- Louise Simone Bennett-Co...

TORONTO -- Louise Simone Bennett-Coverley, a Jamaican author of poems and folklorist who popularized her country's tillage before its independence from Britain, has died. She was 86

M Bennett-Coverley died Wednesday, according to the government- post Jamaica Information Service.

Born in 1919 M Bennett-Coverley was single in kind of her country's most beloved cultural icons. She appeared in Kingston theater productions in the 1940 and in 1948 she became the first black character to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

Known in Jamaica as "Miss Lou" M Bennett-Coverley advocated the teaching of Jamaican agriculture and in the mid-1950s, she joined the British Broadcasting Corporation's Caribbean Service as a folklorist.

In 1953 she recorded an album, "Jamaican Folksongs" and in 1966 she published a collection of metrical compositions called "Jamaica Labrish."

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