Dīmītrios Vernardakīs was born in Agia Marina in 1833. He was schooled at the School of Mytilene, where he also served in the cathedral, and where he obtained stipends to continue his education at the Athens Gymnasium and (precociously), as of 1849, at the School of Philosophy of the University of Athens. In 1854 he published his debut “Graomyomachia” (Γραομυομαχία), an epic-comic poem, and “Peridromos, a heroic poem” (Ο Περίδρομος, ηρωικό ποίημα), both in trimetric iambic verse. The epic poem Ο Πλάνης (“The Wanderer”), of which later only the first canto would be published, was written in the following year. In 1856 his Byzatine-themed Eikasia (on a Hellenistic model) was awarded a prize at the Ralleios (poetry contest), which prompted a wealthy relative to fund a study sojourn in Europe. In 1856 Vernardakīs left for Munich, where he endeavoured to dissuade Jacob Philipp Fallmerayer from his ethnic-discontinuity theory, and where he obtained a doctorate in 1860. He also visited Berlin and published his tragedy Κυψελίδαι (“Kypselidai”) in Leipzig.

Upon his return to Athens in 1861, and not yet 28 years old, Verdanakīs was appointed as extraordinary professor of general history and philology at the university; he was given a professorial chair in 1865. However, following severe conflicts because of his position on the language question he resigned in 1869. After persistent requests he returned to the university (1882), at which time he also became Curator of the National Library; but his renewed linguistic clash with the classicist Kōnstantinos Kontos in 1882-84 (he published a pamphlet in Trieste in 1884 denouncing Kontos’s “psuedo-Atticism”) once again prompted his resignation. He spent the remainder of his life on his home estate, where he died in 1907.

In 1855 Vernardakīs had already taken part in an amateur production of Alexandros Rizos Rangavīs’s Η παραμονή (Ī paramonī, “The Eve [of the Greek Revolution]”).  His own play Μαρία Δοξαπατρή (“Maria Doxapatrī”), on a subject taken from a medieval chronicle and published in Munich in 1858, was prefaced by Προλεγόμενα περί εθνικού ελληνικού δράματος και ιδίως του παρόντος (Prolegomena peri ethnikoy ellīnikou dramatos kai idiōs tou parontos, “Prologue on national Greek drama, particularly of the present day”), the earliest sign of his involvement in drama. Maria Doxapatri relates the doomed love between a Byzantine princess and a French knight, in a manner obviously inspired by Shakespeare. A classical turn followed: in 1861-62 Vernardakīs taught a university course Περί της δραματικής τέχνης του Αισχύλου και ερμηνεία Αγαμέμνονος (Peri tīs dramatikīs technīs tou Aischylou kai ermīneia Agamemnonos, “On the dramatic arts of Aeschylus and the interpretation of Agamemnon”); his translation of Euripides completed his turn towards classical art, as described in his essay Mon édition d’Euripide; et la définition de la tragédie dans la Poétique d’Aristote (1895); Μερόπης (1866, “Meropīs”), a metrical tragedy in five acts (and well known outside Greece in its Serbian and Italian translation), already applied the rules of Aristotelian poetics. In his later dramatic work, Vernardakīs blended classical form and modern themes, culminating in his Φαύστα (1893, “Fausta”), the last major theatre success in katharevousa.

Vernardakīs rejected Enlightenment classicism, embraced historicism (his work appeared in the period dominated by the historical work of Zambelios and Paparrīgopoulos) and was reluctant to accept Western influences too eagerly. His Romantic Nationalism could accordingly link the contemporary nation to its religious tradition and to the legacy of classical Hellenism.