diff --git a/include/wx/htmllbox.h b/include/wx/htmllbox.h
index 2f0675fa62..6557e4e036 100644
--- a/include/wx/htmllbox.h
+++ b/include/wx/htmllbox.h
@@ -74,6 +74,9 @@ public:
     virtual void RefreshAll();
     virtual void SetItemCount(size_t count);
 
+    // provide a way to set the default encoding (non-Unicode only)
+    void SetEncoding(wxFontEncoding encoding) { m_fontEncoding = encoding; }
+    wxFontEncoding GetEncoding() { return m_fontEncoding; }
 
 #if wxUSE_FILESYSTEM
     // retrieve the file system used by the wxHtmlWinParser: if you use
@@ -168,6 +171,9 @@ private:
     // HTML parser we use
     wxHtmlWinParser *m_htmlParser;
 
+    // font encoding (used in non-Unicode mode only)
+    wxFontEncoding  m_fontEncoding;
+
 #if wxUSE_FILESYSTEM
     // file system used by m_htmlParser
     wxFileSystem m_filesystem;
@@ -312,8 +318,9 @@ protected:
     virtual wxString OnGetItem(size_t n) const
         { return m_items[n]; }
 
-    wxArrayString m_items;
-    wxArrayPtrVoid m_HTMLclientData;
+    wxArrayString   m_items;
+    wxArrayPtrVoid  m_HTMLclientData;
+
     // Note: For the benefit of old compilers (like gcc-2.8) this should
     // not be named m_clientdata as that clashes with the name of an
     // anonymous struct member in wxEvtHandler, which we derive from.
diff --git a/src/generic/htmllbox.cpp b/src/generic/htmllbox.cpp
index 8d415e1051..c4256b2dea 100644
--- a/src/generic/htmllbox.cpp
+++ b/src/generic/htmllbox.cpp
@@ -225,6 +225,7 @@ void wxHtmlListBox::Init()
     m_htmlParser = NULL;
     m_htmlRendStyle = new wxHtmlListBoxStyle(*this);
     m_cache = new wxHtmlListBoxCache;
+    m_fontEncoding = wxFONTENCODING_ISO8859_1;
 }
 
 bool wxHtmlListBox::Create(wxWindow *parent,
@@ -293,7 +294,9 @@ void wxHtmlListBox::CacheItem(size_t n) const
             self->m_htmlParser = new wxHtmlWinParser(self);
             m_htmlParser->SetDC(new wxClientDC(self));
             m_htmlParser->SetFS(&self->m_filesystem);
-
+#if !wxUSE_UNICODE
+            m_htmlParser->SetInputEncoding(m_fontEncoding);
+#endif
             // use system's default GUI font by default:
             m_htmlParser->SetStandardFonts();
         }