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I read it in the manga Berserk:

A child of only thirteen like master Adonis... How very cruel...

This is said when referring to Adonis's death, but is How very cruel grammatically correct? Or it is just a typo?

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    It's not a typo, I think... though it is translated from Japanese. Are you seeing it in an official book or in an online digital fan translation?
    – Catija
    Jul 30, 2015 at 2:30
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    I don't know about grammatically correct, but acceptable and semi-common, sure. It's like an abbreviation. Instead of saying "How very cruel it is that he died so young.", "How very cruel." would be an abbreviated expression of the same.
    – user20827
    Jul 30, 2015 at 4:05
  • @Catija I am not sure, I read it online but it might be official since I had seen another version which is not that decent.
    – CYC
    Jul 30, 2015 at 9:56

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We use this term, although not very often and it's a bit old. The very is for emphasis. I looked in the ngram viewer for a more common term. The term "how interesting" occurs about 10 times as often as "how very interesting" in 1870, whereas in 2000, "how interesting" is about 50 times as prevalent.

If you want to play with the ngram viewer yourself (which looks in millions of books for specified phrases), you can find it here.

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