diff --git a/Doc/tools/sphinxext/pyspecific.py b/Doc/tools/sphinxext/pyspecific.py
index 22ecaa23a36..00190f2a954 100644
--- a/Doc/tools/sphinxext/pyspecific.py
+++ b/Doc/tools/sphinxext/pyspecific.py
@@ -48,7 +48,11 @@ from pprint import pformat
 from docutils.io import StringOutput
 from docutils.utils import new_document
 from sphinx.builder import Builder
-from sphinx.writers.text import TextWriter
+
+try:
+    from sphinx.writers.text import TextWriter
+except ImportError:
+    from sphinx.textwriter import TextWriter
 
 class PydocTopicsBuilder(Builder):
     name = 'pydoc-topics'