diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 0e94843c..dc5ff161 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -6,6 +6,14 @@ Release date: TBD
 
 * Fixed SSCursor raising OperationalError for query timeouts on wrong statement (#1032)
 * Exposed `Cursor.warning_count` to check for warnings without additional query (#1056)
+* Make Cursor iterator (#995)
+* Support '_' in key name in my.cnf (#1114)
+* `Cursor.fetchall()` returns empty list instead of tuple (#1115). Note that `Cursor.fetchmany()` still return empty tuple after reading all rows for compatibility with Django.
+* Deprecate Error classes in Cursor class (#1117)
+* Add `Connection.set_character_set(charset, collation=None)` (#1119)
+* Deprecate `Connection.set_charset(charset)` (#1119)
+* New connection always send "SET NAMES charset [COLLATE collation]" query. (#1119)
+  Since collation table is vary on MySQL server versions, collation in handshake is fragile.
 
 
 ## v1.0.3
diff --git a/pymysql/__init__.py b/pymysql/__init__.py
index ab43c1a9..b9971ff0 100644
--- a/pymysql/__init__.py
+++ b/pymysql/__init__.py
@@ -47,8 +47,9 @@
 )
 
 # PyMySQL version.
-# Used by setuptools.
-VERSION = (1, 1, 0, "dev", 1)
+# Used by setuptools and connection_attrs
+VERSION = (1, 1, 0, "rc", 1)
+VERSION_STRING = "1.1.0rc1"
 
 ### for mysqlclient compatibility
 ### Django checks mysqlclient version.
diff --git a/pymysql/connections.py b/pymysql/connections.py
index 6edac04c..843bea5e 100644
--- a/pymysql/connections.py
+++ b/pymysql/connections.py
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@
     EOFPacketWrapper,
     LoadLocalPacketWrapper,
 )
-from . import err, __version__
+from . import err, VERSION_STRING
 
 try:
     import ssl
@@ -345,8 +345,8 @@ def _config(key, arg):
 
         self._connect_attrs = {
             "_client_name": "pymysql",
+            "_client_version": VERSION_STRING,
             "_pid": str(os.getpid()),
-            "_client_version": __version__,
         }
 
         if program_name: