Appleby was born in Omaha, Nebraska.[1] Her father was a businessman and she attended public schools in Omaha, Dallas, Kansas City, Evanston, Phoenix and Pasadena.[citation needed]
Appleby received her B.A. degree from Stanford University in 1950 and became a magazine writer in New York.[1] Returning to academia, she earned her Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate School in 1966.
Appleby was the widow of Andrew Bell Appleby, a professor of European history at San Diego State University.[1] Her first marriage to Mark Lansburgh ended in divorce. She had three children: Ann Lansburgh Caylor, Mark Lansburgh and Frank Bell Appleby.[1]
Appleby died on December 23, 2016, at the age of 87.[2]
As the president of the Organization of American Historians, Appleby secured congressional support for an endowment to send American studies libraries to 60 universities around the world. A selection of 1,000 books was made by a group of scholars on American history, literature, political science, sociology and philosophy.[5]
Appleby was a specialist in historiography and the political thought of the early American Republic, with special interests in Republicanism, liberalism and the history of ideas about capitalism.[1] She served on the editorial boards of numerous scholarly journals and editorial projects, and received prominent national fellowships.
Works
Articles
"Reconciliation and the Northern Novelist, 1865–1880", Civil War History, Vol. 10 (June 1964)
"The Jefferson-Adams Rupture and the First French Translation of John Adams' Defence", American Historical Review, Vol. 73, No. 4 (April 1968)
"The New Republican Synthesis and the Changing Political Ideas of John Adams", American Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 5 (December 1973)
"Liberalism and the American Revolution", New England Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 1 (March 1976)
"The Social Origins of American Revolutionary Ideology", Journal of American History, Vol. 64, No. 4 (March 1978)