diff --git a/delta/corpus.py b/delta/corpus.py
index 5bc00fb..8492105 100644
--- a/delta/corpus.py
+++ b/delta/corpus.py
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ class which represents the feature matrix. Also contained are default
 
 import os
 import glob
+from collections import Mapping
 from fnmatch import fnmatch
 from inspect import signature
 from typing import Type
@@ -20,6 +21,8 @@ class which represents the feature matrix. Also contained are default
 from math import ceil
 from delta.util import Metadata, DocumentDescriber, DefaultDocumentDescriber, ngrams
 
+from joblib import Parallel, delayed
+
 import logging
 
 
@@ -62,7 +65,9 @@ def __init__(self, lower_case=False, encoding="utf-8", glob='*.txt',
                  skip=None,
                  token_pattern=LETTERS_PATTERN,
                  max_tokens=None,
-                 ngrams=None):
+                 ngrams=None,
+                 parallel=False
+                 ):
         """
         Creates a customized default feature generator.
 
@@ -80,6 +85,10 @@ def __init__(self, lower_case=False, encoding="utf-8", glob='*.txt',
                 regular expressions*) that contains at least one letter.
             max_tokens (int): If set, stop reading each file after that many words.
             ngrams (int): Count token ngrams instead of single tokens
+            parallel(bool|int|Parallel): If truish, read and parse files in parallel. The actual argument may be
+                - None or False for no special processing
+                - an int for the required number of jobs
+                - a dictionary with Parallel arguments for finer control
         """
         self.lower_case = lower_case
         self.encoding = encoding
@@ -89,6 +98,7 @@ def __init__(self, lower_case=False, encoding="utf-8", glob='*.txt',
         self.max_tokens = max_tokens
         self.ngrams = ngrams
         self.logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
+        self.parallel = parallel
 
     def __repr__(self):
         return type(self).__name__ + '(' + \
@@ -217,11 +227,24 @@ def process_directory(self, directory):
                 len(filenames),
                 self.glob,
                 directory)
-        data = (self.process_file(filename)
-                for filename in filenames
-                if self.skip is None or not(fnmatch(filename, self.skip)))
+        used_filenames = [filename for filename in filenames if self.skip is None or not(fnmatch(filename, self.skip))]
+        parallel = self._get_parallel_executor()
+        if parallel:
+            data = parallel(delayed(self.process_file)(filename) for filename in used_filenames)
+        else:
+            data = (self.process_file(filename) for filename in used_filenames)
         return {series.name: series for series in data}
 
+    def _get_parallel_executor(self) -> Parallel:
+        if self.parallel:
+            if isinstance(self.parallel, Mapping):
+                return Parallel(**self.parallel)
+            elif self.parallel == True:
+                return Parallel(-1)
+            elif isinstance(self.parallel, int):
+                return Parallel(self.parallel)
+        return None
+
     def __call__(self, directory):
         """
         Runs the feature extraction using :meth:`process_directory` for the
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 59aac4d..e7d0f31 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@
         'pandas>=0.13.1',          # https://github.com/cophi-wue/pydelta/issues/6
 #        'profig>=0.2.8',
         'scikit-learn>=0.16.0',
+        'joblib>=1.0.1',
         'regex'
     ],
     test_suite = 'nose.collector'