His translation of Kalidasa's Abhinjana Sakuntalam (completed in 1882), and of Von Limburg Brower's Akbar (started in 1882) clearly illustrates the historic role of a synthesizer which he was destined to play on the Kerala cultural front. His connections with the royal family, his education and upbringing, his position as president of the Text Book Committee, his progressive and independent outlook, his intellectual prowess and other personality factors made him tower head and shoulders above all his contemporaries. He wrote a number of works in both Sanskrit and Malayalam, both in prose and verse but his personal influence was greater than what was achieve through these works. It may be said that the man was greater than all his writings. Well versed in all aspects of classical Sanskrit poetics and quite at home in the native tradition, master of a sonorous Sanskrit diction and proficient in simple colloquial Malayalam, Kerala Varma's reputation, still depends not on any single book he wrote.
The development of Malayalam and literature was his life's mission: and in collaboration with C.P.Achutha Menon (editor of Vidyavinodini magazine) and Kandathil Varghese Mappila (editor of Malayala Manorama), he did his utmost to encourage all kinds of writers and writings. Even underserving quill-pushes received his support, encouragement and blessing in this process of all-out promotion of letters. His most widely known literary work is Mayursandesam (Peacock Message) written in 1884. Its intrinsic merits were perhaps exaggerated at the time of its first appearance, but itss historical importance is yet to be properly assessed. It is a work that looks in many directions. It harks back to Kalidasa, the most romantic and subjective work of that poet, whose influence among other things was chiefly responsible for the revival of romanticism in 19th century Europe. It combines the mixed style of Manipravala poems with the pure Malayalam of Venmani poets but used for a "personal" communication. It allows the free play of fancy (as seen in the pun on Neelakanta), but also reveals the operation of a complex imagination at times (as in the identification quatrain). It would be too much to say that Mayurasandesam anticipates the romantic movement, but there is no doubt that there is a softening of the rhetoric of classicism in several of its quatrains. Already in the heart of classicism one hears the soft notes of romantic lyricism.

Once while alone hunting birds in the park,
O blue-eyed one, I happened to kill a bird.
Out of pity for his bereaved companion close by
Did you not, O timid one, ask me to kill her too!

The lyrical note is heard at some depth; the subjective element is openly acknowledged; these are important gains.Mrigayasmaranakal Some of his prose essays are of an informal, subjective type like (Memories of Hunting).