diff --git a/docs/topics/shell.rst b/docs/topics/shell.rst
index 87dc27d51..5bed14884 100644
--- a/docs/topics/shell.rst
+++ b/docs/topics/shell.rst
@@ -89,6 +89,8 @@ Those objects are:
  * ``xxs`` - a :class:`~scrapy.selector.XmlXPathSelector` object constructed
    with the last response fetched
 
+ * ``settings`` - the current :ref:`Scrapy settings <topics-settings>`
+
 Example of shell session
 ========================
 
@@ -116,6 +118,7 @@ all start with the ``[s]`` prefix)::
     [s]   item      Item()
     [s]   request   <http://scrapy.org>
     [s]   response  <http://scrapy.org>
+    [s]   settings  <Settings 'mybot.settings'>
     [s]   spider    <scrapy.spider.models.BaseSpider object at 0x2bed9d0>
     [s]   xxs       <XmlXPathSelector (http://scrapy.org) xpath=None>
     [s] Useful shortcuts:
diff --git a/scrapy/shell.py b/scrapy/shell.py
index 3390b34f1..af6060cd8 100644
--- a/scrapy/shell.py
+++ b/scrapy/shell.py
@@ -17,12 +17,13 @@ from scrapy.utils.misc import load_object
 from scrapy.utils.response import open_in_browser
 from scrapy.utils.url import any_to_uri
 from scrapy.utils.console import start_python_console
-from scrapy.conf import settings
+from scrapy.conf import settings, Settings
 from scrapy.http import Request, Response, TextResponse
 
 class Shell(object):
 
-    relevant_classes = (BaseSpider, Request, Response, BaseItem, XPathSelector)
+    relevant_classes = (BaseSpider, Request, Response, BaseItem, \
+        XPathSelector, Settings)
 
     def __init__(self, crawler, update_vars=None, inthread=False):
         self.crawler = crawler
@@ -71,6 +72,7 @@ class Shell(object):
     def populate_vars(self, url=None, response=None, request=None, spider=None):
         item = self.item_class()
         self.vars['item'] = item
+        self.vars['settings'] = settings
         if url:
             if isinstance(response, TextResponse):
                 self.vars['xxs'] = XmlXPathSelector(response)