From: http://docs.python.org/lib/module-email.header.html
>>> from email.message import Message >>> from email.header import Header >>> msg = Message() >>> h = Header('p\xf6stal', 'iso-8859-1') >>> msg['Subject'] = h >>> print msg.as_string() Subject: =?iso-8859-1?q?p=F6stal?= /Martin -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list