diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt
index cc9ab81ce0955d..a1b455909a0188 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt
@@ -126,6 +126,7 @@ Other Enhancements
 - :func:`date_range` now accepts 'Y' in addition to 'A' as an alias for end of year (:issue:`9313`)
 - Integration with `Apache Parquet <https://parquet.apache.org/>`__, including a new top-level :func:`read_parquet` and :func:`DataFrame.to_parquet` method, see :ref:`here <io.parquet>`.
 - :func:`DataFrame.add_prefix` and :func:`DataFrame.add_suffix` now accept strings containing the '%' character. (:issue:`17151`)
+- :func:`read_csv` can now infer compression from non-string paths, such as a ``pathlab.Path`` objects (:issue:`17206`).
 
 .. _whatsnew_0210.api_breaking:
 
diff --git a/pandas/io/parsers.py b/pandas/io/parsers.py
index 9c76d3126890c1..05a04f268f72b5 100755
--- a/pandas/io/parsers.py
+++ b/pandas/io/parsers.py
@@ -208,11 +208,11 @@
     <http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/stable/io.html#io-chunking>`_
     for more information on ``iterator`` and ``chunksize``.
 compression : {'infer', 'gzip', 'bz2', 'zip', 'xz', None}, default 'infer'
-    For on-the-fly decompression of on-disk data. If 'infer', then use gzip,
-    bz2, zip or xz if filepath_or_buffer is a string ending in '.gz', '.bz2',
-    '.zip', or 'xz', respectively, and no decompression otherwise. If using
-    'zip', the ZIP file must contain only one data file to be read in.
-    Set to None for no decompression.
+    For on-the-fly decompression of on-disk data. If 'infer' and
+    `filepath_or_buffer` is path-like, then detect compression from the
+    following extensions: '.gz', '.bz2', '.zip', or '.xz' (otherwise no
+    decompression). If using 'zip', the ZIP file must contain only one data
+    file to be read in. Set to None for no decompression.
 
     .. versionadded:: 0.18.1 support for 'zip' and 'xz' compression.
 
diff --git a/pandas/io/pickle.py b/pandas/io/pickle.py
index 6f345092c514dc..143b76575e36ba 100644
--- a/pandas/io/pickle.py
+++ b/pandas/io/pickle.py
@@ -62,8 +62,8 @@ def read_pickle(path, compression='infer'):
         File path
     compression : {'infer', 'gzip', 'bz2', 'xz', 'zip', None}, default 'infer'
         For on-the-fly decompression of on-disk data. If 'infer', then use
-        gzip, bz2, xz or zip if path is a string ending in '.gz', '.bz2', 'xz',
-        or 'zip' respectively, and no decompression otherwise.
+        gzip, bz2, xz or zip if path ends in '.gz', '.bz2', '.xz',
+        or '.zip' respectively, and no decompression otherwise.
         Set to None for no decompression.
 
         .. versionadded:: 0.20.0