diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index dc5bd04..8fde243 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -88,7 +88,6 @@ The arguments are:
 	- `mono`: disable multithreading while fetching, makes debugging easier
 	- `theforce`: force download the rss feed and ignore cached http errros
 	- `silent`: don't output the final RSS (useless on its own, but can be nice when debugging)
-	- `encoding=ENCODING`: overrides the encoding auto-detection of the crawler. Some web developers did not quite understand the importance of setting charset/encoding tags correctly...
 - http server only
 	- `callback=NAME`: for JSONP calls
 	- `cors`: allow Cross-origin resource sharing (allows XHR calls from other servers)
diff --git a/morss/feeds.py b/morss/feeds.py
index 7485760..5859390 100644
--- a/morss/feeds.py
+++ b/morss/feeds.py
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ import dateutil.parser
 from copy import deepcopy
 
 import lxml.html
-from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
+from .readabilite import parse as html_parse
 
 json.encoder.c_make_encoder = None
 
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ def parse_rules(filename=None):
     return rules
 
 
-def parse(data, url=None, mimetype=None):
+def parse(data, url=None, mimetype=None, encoding=None):
     " Determine which ruleset to use "
 
     rulesets = parse_rules()
@@ -67,7 +67,7 @@ def parse(data, url=None, mimetype=None):
                 for path in ruleset['path']:
                     if fnmatch(url, path):
                         parser = [x for x in parsers if x.mode == ruleset['mode']][0]
-                        return parser(data, ruleset) 
+                        return parser(data, ruleset, encoding=encoding) 
 
     # 2) Look for a parser based on mimetype
 
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ def parse(data, url=None, mimetype=None):
             # 'path' as they should have been caught beforehands
 
         try:
-            feed = parser(data)
+            feed = parser(data, encoding=encoding)
 
         except (ValueError):
             # parsing did not work
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ def parse(data, url=None, mimetype=None):
 
 
 class ParserBase(object):
-    def __init__(self, data=None, rules=None, parent=None):
+    def __init__(self, data=None, rules=None, parent=None, encoding=None):
         if rules is None:
             rules = parse_rules()[self.default_ruleset]
 
@@ -122,9 +122,10 @@ class ParserBase(object):
         if data is None:
             data = rules['base']
 
-        self.root = self.parse(data)
         self.parent = parent
+        self.encoding = encoding
 
+        self.root = self.parse(data)
 
     def parse(self, raw):
         pass
@@ -442,8 +443,7 @@ class ParserHTML(ParserXML):
     mimetype = ['text/html', 'application/xhtml+xml']
 
     def parse(self, raw):
-        parser = etree.HTMLParser(remove_blank_text=True) # remove_blank_text needed for pretty_print
-        return etree.fromstring(BeautifulSoup(raw, 'lxml').prettify('utf-8'), parser)
+        return html_parse(raw, encoding=self.encoding)
 
     def tostring(self, encoding='unicode', **k):
         return lxml.html.tostring(self.root, encoding=encoding, **k)
diff --git a/morss/morss.py b/morss/morss.py
index 19973a0..b0d1735 100644
--- a/morss/morss.py
+++ b/morss/morss.py
@@ -10,7 +10,6 @@ import re
 
 import lxml.etree
 import lxml.html
-from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
 
 from . import feeds
 from . import crawler
@@ -261,7 +260,7 @@ def ItemFill(item, options, feedurl='/', fast=False):
         log('non-text page')
         return True
 
-    out = readabilite.get_article(data, link, options.encoding or crawler.detect_encoding(data, con))
+    out = readabilite.get_article(data, url=con.geturl(), encoding=encoding)
 
     if out is not None:
         item.content = out
@@ -329,7 +328,7 @@ def FeedFetch(url, options):
 
     if options.items:
         # using custom rules
-        rss = feeds.FeedHTML(xml)
+        rss = feeds.FeedHTML(xml, encoding=encoding)
 
         rss.rules['title'] = options.title              if options.title        else '//head/title'
         rss.rules['desc'] = options.desc                if options.desc         else '//head/meta[@name="description"]/@content'
@@ -349,7 +348,7 @@ def FeedFetch(url, options):
 
     else:
         try:
-            rss = feeds.parse(xml, url, contenttype)
+            rss = feeds.parse(xml, url, contenttype, encoding=encoding)
             rss = rss.convert(feeds.FeedXML)
                 # contains all fields, otherwise much-needed data can be lost
 
@@ -649,7 +648,7 @@ def cgi_page(environ, start_response):
     data, con, contenttype, encoding = crawler.adv_get(url=url)
 
     if contenttype in ['text/html', 'application/xhtml+xml', 'application/xml']:
-        html = lxml.html.fromstring(BeautifulSoup(data, 'lxml').prettify())
+        html = readabilite.parse(data, encoding=encoding)
         html.make_links_absolute(con.geturl())
 
         kill_tags = ['script', 'iframe', 'noscript']
diff --git a/morss/readabilite.py b/morss/readabilite.py
index 7cbece7..b5dad9c 100644
--- a/morss/readabilite.py
+++ b/morss/readabilite.py
@@ -6,11 +6,14 @@ import re
 
 def parse(data, encoding=None):
     if encoding:
-        parser = lxml.html.HTMLParser(remove_blank_text=True, remove_comments=True, encoding=encoding)
-    else:
-        parser = lxml.html.HTMLParser(remove_blank_text=True, remove_comments=True)
+        data = BeautifulSoup(data, 'lxml', from_encoding=encoding).prettify('utf-8')
 
-    return lxml.html.fromstring(BeautifulSoup(data, 'lxml').prettify('utf-8'), parser=parser)
+    else:
+        data = BeautifulSoup(data, 'lxml').prettify('utf-8')
+
+    parser = lxml.html.HTMLParser(remove_blank_text=True, remove_comments=True, encoding='utf-8')
+
+    return lxml.html.fromstring(data, parser=parser)
 
 
 def count_words(string):