The Lie Xian Zhuan (列仙傳) is traditionally attributed to Liu Xiang (劉向, 77–6 BCE), the eminent Han-dynasty Confucian scholar, bibliographer, and court official who compiled and edited many of China's foundational classical texts. While modern scholarship debates the precise authorship and dating of the text, it is generally accepted as a Han-dynasty compilation drawing on earlier oral and written traditions about immortals and their practices.

The text presents seventy brief biographies arranged in a loose chronological order, beginning with mythological figures of high antiquity such as the Yellow Emperor and Laozi, and extending through the Warring States and Han periods. Each biography records the immortal's cultivation method — whether consuming pine resin, practicing breath retention, ingesting minerals, or cultivating inner stillness — and the manner of their final transcendence. The Lie Xian Zhuan is thus both a religious text and a historical document, preserving evidence of the diverse cultivation traditions that preceded the formal organization of Taoism.

As the earliest surviving Taoist hagiographic collection, the Lie Xian Zhuan exercised a profound influence on all subsequent immortal biography literature, including the Shen Xian Zhuan of Ge Hong and the vast hagiographic compilations of the Tang and Song dynasties. It remains an indispensable primary source for the study of early Taoist religion, Chinese religious history, and the history of inner cultivation practices.