diff --git a/doc/source/io.rst b/doc/source/io.rst
index 104172d9574f1..6cf41bbc50fb5 100644
--- a/doc/source/io.rst
+++ b/doc/source/io.rst
@@ -169,6 +169,13 @@ skipfooter : int, default ``0``
   Number of lines at bottom of file to skip (unsupported with engine='c').
 nrows : int, default ``None``
   Number of rows of file to read. Useful for reading pieces of large files.
+low_memory : boolean, default ``True``
+  Internally process the file in chunks, resulting in lower memory use
+  while parsing, but possibly mixed type inference.  To ensure no mixed
+  types either set ``False``, or specify the type with the ``dtype`` parameter.
+  Note that the entire file is read into a single DataFrame regardless,
+  use the ``chunksize`` or ``iterator`` parameter to return the data in chunks.
+  (Only valid with C parser)
 
 NA and Missing Data Handling
 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
diff --git a/pandas/io/parsers.py b/pandas/io/parsers.py
index 95a7f63075167..bf4083f61155c 100755
--- a/pandas/io/parsers.py
+++ b/pandas/io/parsers.py
@@ -220,6 +220,13 @@
 warn_bad_lines : boolean, default True
     If error_bad_lines is False, and warn_bad_lines is True, a warning for each
     "bad line" will be output. (Only valid with C parser).
+low_memory : boolean, default True
+    Internally process the file in chunks, resulting in lower memory use
+    while parsing, but possibly mixed type inference.  To ensure no mixed
+    types either set False, or specify the type with the `dtype` parameter.
+    Note that the entire file is read into a single DataFrame regardless,
+    use the `chunksize` or `iterator` parameter to return the data in chunks.
+    (Only valid with C parser)
 
 Returns
 -------