We study Wronskians of Appell polynomials indexed by integer partitions. These families of polynomials appear in rational solutions of certain Painlevé equations and in the study of exceptional orthogonal polynomials. We determine their derivatives, their average and variance with respect to Plancherel measure, and introduce several recurrence relations. In addition, we prove an integrality conjecture for Wronskian Hermite polynomials previously made by the first and last authors. Our proofs all exploit strong connections with the theory of symmetric functions.